


Retrograde

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bipolar Disorder, F/M, Homophobic Language, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, M/M, Miscomunication, Shortened age gap?? idk, Slow Burn, Swearing, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-07-27 12:51:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7618759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s when something spectacular happens. Like a supernova explosion, the birth of the fucking Universe, right there, in that Science Lab. Matter smaller than anything else that’s ever existed compresses so tightly, it implodes on itself, because Obi-Wan Kenobi gets up from his little stool, draws his fist back, and punches Anakin right in the fucking face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

This is just the best day of his life. If not, top five, at least, absolutely. His hair is a fucking mess, there’s a ketchup stain on his jeans that looks like goddamned _menstrual blood_ , and his calculator is dead. It’s just, stellar, yeah? Because it’s not like those were the exact fucking things people used to mock him for: having terrible hair, looking like a fucking girl and being poor. He prayed to God, _please, give me more reasons to feel uncomfortable and uneasy this afternoon, please_ , and the mighty lord answered. Hashtag fucking blessed.

Anakin hates everything and everyone but mostly Mr Jinn, who Anakin refused to call Qui Gonna Jizz along with the other people in his Physics class, but guess what, Qui Gonna Jizz sounds really funny now, asshole.

Again, best day of his life, walking, no, _stumping_ through his school on a Friday afternoon, looking like (and wishing) death, about to be tutored by the same dude he’s been awkwardly tip toeing around for the last year.

He could not go. Except Mr. Jinn—Qui Gonna Jizz—is that kind of teacher that does dumb things like actually care about the welfare of his students, so he would know and ask _questions_. Explaining his feelings to his AP Physics teacher actually sounds worse than the situation he’s in right now, which is both a relief and very, very depressing.

He grips his backpack’s straps tighter. He can already read the little “Lab” sign at the end of the hall. A sprinting girl flies past him, muttering “shit shit shit shit” as she goes. It’s all very cinematic, and relatable, and makes him want to kill himself.

The lab door is not fully closed, handle half-turned, like it was opened in a hurry. Through the small translucent window at the top Anakin can see a small shadow. He brushes off one of his backpack’s straps, breathes out of his nose like a bull, and walks in.

Of course, the motherfucker is smoking. And sitting on a table. And looking like the second coming of James fucking Dean. There’s a shiny Casio next to his ass, with what seem like work sheets beneath it. Anakin sees him trying not to look at the huge red spot on his pants, and for some reason it adds that extra layer of anger to his already endless list of conflictive emotions.

“Oh, hello. You’re late.” Kenobi says.

“No, I’m not, it’s five thirty on my phone.”

Okay, so, already sounding like a ten year old, you can check that out of the list. He drops his stuff on a table two rows apart from the one Kenobi’s sitting on. The lab Qui Gonna Jizz booked is not the biggest one in school, but it’s still large enough that it feels weird to be there with just one person. The windows are wide open, thank God. Without the birds occasionally screaming over the silence Anakin would worry about actually popping an embolism.

“Well, it’s fine.” Kenobi says, pushing himself off the table. The weight on Anakin’s chest lifts a little because it’s a hilarious image, but then settles back in when Kenobi puffs off a last breath of smoke and throws away the fag. “Where do you want to sit?”

Anakin bites back a _your fucking lap, santa claus,_ and shrugs, sitting on the chair closest to his table. Kenobi brings his things next to the books, along with a stool. He takes off his leather jacket while he sits down, gracefully, like he does everything else. It makes Anakin cringe.

“So, it’s Calculus, right?”

“No, it’s shapes” Anakin blurts out. It was already lucky that he’d kept the lap thing to himself. Karma loves him, but not that much.

“Shapes?”

Fuck, the guy actually sounds dubious. Yeah man, fucking shapes, get your fucking coloring books out, Jesus Christ.

“Yeah, it’s calculus.”

Kenobi is still looking at him, but his eyes are different. He puts the pen down, sitting back on his chair. Anakin fiddles with his exercising book, but the stare makes his forehead burn. Obviously, because the world is in tune with the dramatic needs of his shit-filled life, the birds are dead quiet. If a pin dropped in the other end of the lab, they’d hear it.

“Is there a problem?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because if there’s a problem, we can act on it.”

Who even says shit like that? _We can act on it._ It’s such an Obi-Wan Kenobi thing to say, and yet it sounds awkward even as he speaks it. Or maybe it’s just that Anakin hasn’t heard him talk so much in a while. That thought alone pisses him off. He lifts his head and clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“There’s no fucking problem, there’s nothing to _act on_ , alright.”

Kenobi opens his mouth slightly, eyebrows furrowed, and Anakin feels something contract right from deep within his bones, like a rubber band stretched to max, waiting to be fired off. Then Kenobi closes his mouth and asks Anakin if he has a calculator, in such a polite dead voice he sounds like Siri.

“It’s not working.” Anakin says. It sounds constipated to his own ears.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe the battery’s dead?”

“You think I haven’t tried changing the battery?”

Kenobi’s mouth is curling again. “How am I supposed to know?”

Anakin is about to fire back something else, but Kenobi takes his Casio off the case in lighting speed and places it in front of him. “Here.”

It shuts him up, alright, because it’s an fx-CG20, already turned on, and the menu looks cleaner and more colorful than anything he’s ever owned in his entire life. Anakin’s only ever dreamed of more than 200 functions and graphical color displays. Fuck, if only he could show up with this baby to class and shut up that Mace Windu prick about _proper work instruments_.

“You’ve never seen one of these?”

The voice makes Anakin jump slightly. “What?”

Kenobi clears his throat. “You’re… excited.”

It’s like when you’re sick and suddenly taste the bile coming back up again. Anakin puts the Casio down, crosses his arms. Of course you wouldn’t expect a guy who’s wearing the cost of Anakin’s car in clothes to understand his excitement towards a 150 dollar calculator. Still, it makes him feel like a child, gushing around his fucking toy.

“Whatever.”

“You know how to use it?”

At this moment, Anakin actually takes a second to wonder if Kenobi is purposely doing this. If he knows the exact words that will definitely trigger a reaction, if he’s winding Anakin up. A couple years back, his brain’s immediate response would’ve been, “no, of course not, Obi-Wan’s not like that”. But now he’s not so sure. Actually, he’s not sure at _all_.

“I think I wouldn’t be taking AP Calculus if I didn’t know how to use a fucking calculator.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Then what did you mean?”

Kenobi has his tired eyes on again, those stupid fucking eyes, like he’s dealing with a whiny ass kid who won’t cooperate, and it’s so unfair, because Anakin came here today to be tutored, to be _explained things_ by a guy who’s made him feel inferior his whole life. He came here on a Friday afternoon, with no classes after eleven, god damn it.

“Why are you being like this?”

“I’m not being like anything! Fuck!” Anakin pushes his chair away from the table with a loud noise and gets up, kicking it aside.

 “Anakin.”

He shoves the things on his table into his backpack, pushing up the zipper so fast it obviously gets stuck halfway. The tension in his chest is so tight he’s starting to feel lightheaded.

“Anakin.”

“Fucking _what?”_

He looks down at where Kenobi is still sitting, in his little stool, and freezes. His eyes are not tired anymore, they’re harder than steel. His nostrils are flaring. Anakin remembers this. This exact expression, appears in his mind like a picture, taken a year ago. Anakin’s blood rushes to so many places at once he can’t keep track of it.

“Sit down.”

Anakin freezes, of course, right until he’s ordered around. Because, unlike a year ago, he’s not somebody’s bitch anymore.

“Fuck you, you ginger prick.”

It’s when something spectacular happens. Like a supernova explosion, the birth of the fucking Universe, right there, in that Science Lab, matter smaller than anything else that ever existed compresses so tightly it implodes in itself, because Obi Wan Kenobi gets up from his little stool, draws his fist back, and punches Anakin right in the fucking face. It’s like something gets loose in his chest, the stretched rubber band goes flying to oblivion. Anakin falls back, holding himself in the table behind him. His stupid broken backpack drops to the floor with a satisfying poof. Anakin’s mind goes blank, and his vision goes red.

Then, the big bang.

 

* * *

 

They beat each other up for about ten minutes until a bucket of water was thrown at them. Kenobi immediately jumped off him, crawling backwards until his back hit a wall. Anakin grinned up at the janitor, blood dripping from his nose.

“Hey, man.”

 

* * *

 

They’re sitting outside the principal’s office, two chairs apart. Anakin has a bunch of napkins shoved up his left nostril. It’s fine, because apart from his hair and the collar of his shirt, he’s pretty much dry, while Kenobi is shivering next to him like a newborn baby deer. And he has a gigantic bag of ice pressed against his back. Right after he socked Anakin in the face, Anakin had flung himself over the table, pushing Kenobi to the ground.

Must’ve hurt falling on top of that stool. Kenobi could’ve been paraplegic from the impact alone. Clearly, he was fine, Anakin was immediately kneed in the balls, but still.

He hadn’t lost that much control over himself in a while. He feels a weird sort of apathy. He’s not calm, he’s just—nothing. He’s nothing. It’s nice. His shrink says it doesn’t last and it’s not worth the damage. That might be true. But right now, Anakin doesn’t care about truth. He doesn’t care about anything.

It’s only when the janitor tells him to shut up that he realizes he’s humming.

Since it’s nearly six pm on a Friday afternoon, the school is almost empty. Aside from a couple of kids taking shit out of their locker and someone tearing down some stupid pro-life posters off the walls, the corridor is deserted. The janitor is sitting next to Anakin, probably because, between him and Kenobi, he’s the one that seems more likely to have another go. It’s not necessarily a lie.

Through the glass walls of the secretary, Anakin watches Ms Billaba type something on the computer like her life depends on it. The woman always seems to be furious at whomever or whatever is in that screen. Anakin had to ask her for an address form one time and it was terrifying. They both jump slightly when the phone rings. Anakin watches her glance at him, and gets up.

“Did I tell you to get up, boy?”

“She’s gonna call us in.”

“How would you ever—”

Ms Billaba taps on the glass wall, pointing at the principal’s office with her head, fingers never leaving the keyboard. 

“Ah, God damn it. C’mon, you too, lad.” The janitor mutters at Kenobi.

“Alright.” He says. Kenobi takes the ice bag under the back of his shirt and leaves it on the chair, opening the dean’s office door himself. He walks in without another word, the janitor fussing behind with Anakin locked by the elbow.

This office is significantly warmer than the corridor, but it’s also uglier. There’s red carpet everywhere, even on the fucking walls, which is the next level of tacky. Anakin’s been here before, once, with Shmi, and stayed for like twelve seconds before Palpatine kicked him out. To this day, Anakin swears the old hag made moves on Shmi, though she refuses to talk about it. _Jesus_ , he would too. No, false, he’d call the police.

Palpatine is reading something on his MacBook, and waves somewhere in their general direction. “Thank you, Saul, you can stay outside.”

Saul mutters something that strongly resembles “Paul” under his breath, and Anakin lets off a laugh, because that shit’s hilarious. Palpatine gives him a look, and he shuts up. Kenobi takes the right chair, straightening up like he remembered the long thick pole he’s got stuck in his ass. The back of his shirt is so wet it’s glued to his skin. Anakin wonders if it’s purple, his skin.

“Mr Skywalker.”

He drags his eyes away from Kenobi’s back and up Palpatine’s face.

“Yeah?”

“Sit down.”

He lets out another laugh, this one more like a cackle than anything else. Everybody wants him to sit the fuck down today. He pulls back the chair before slumping on it, because it’s padded, and padded chairs are things he’ll only enjoy in offices, and maybe funerals.

“So, what happened?” Palpatine asks.

Utter, fucking silence. Shit, he’s willing to wait. He knows Kenobi’s gonna feel the need to take up responsibility, being the oldest and the better guy. Anakin wants to hear him explain what happened. He’s sure the same little guys who are playing soft classical piano in Anakin’s brain are screaming their fucking guts out in Kenobi’s.

“C’mon, the sooner we get this sorted, the sooner we all get to go home, yes?” Palpatine flashes them the fakest smile in the whole fucking Universe. They say nothing, so he drops it immediately. “If you don’t start talking, I’ll call both of your parents right now informing them their sons have each landed two weeks of suspension, plus sanitary work on the gymnasium’s lockers for fighting and damaging school property. And that said school property will _have_ to be paid for.”

Knowning Palpatine, he’ll do the exact same shit once they talk.

“I don’t know.”

It takes Anakin a second to process it.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Are teenagers nowadays so unintelligent they’ll start fights over literally nothing? Is that what you mean?”

Kenobi looks down, but he’s not ashamed. His jaw is tight, his fists are closed over his knees. Again, Anakin feels the same rush of blood, everywhere at once, nowhere in particular, the same lightheadedness. Just watching Kenobi grow angry is doing shit to Anakin. Everything he thought about wanting to hear Kenobi’s version was fucking _wrong_. He doesn’t anymore.

“I don’t know why I hit him. I don’t know why we fought. I—I don’t know.”

“Shut up.”

Kenobi’s eyes snap right into Anakin’s. The shrink was right, apathy does not last.

Palpatine clears his throat. “Mr Skywalker, if you’re not going to add—”

“You know exactly why you punched me, you know exactly why it happened, don’t start with that crap.”

“Boys, do I have to—”

“Go on then, if you’re so fucking sure of everything, say it like it is, or are you going to wait for me to speak just so you can tell me how wrong I am?”

That’s… unexpected. So unexpected Palpatine shuts the fuck up as well. Anakin blinks twice before grabbing Kenobi’s chair. He pulls it towards him until it tilts, but Kenobi keeps his feet planted on the floor, holding his stare.

“You want me to say it like it is? Okay. You punched me because I didn’t do what you told me to.”

Kenobi gets up so quickly the chair nearly falls to Anakin’s side. “Sir, I’m sorry, can we please do this individually?”

Palpatine, who was gaping at him from the moment he said “fucking”, closes his mouth. He glances between the two of them. “I—I suppose.”

“But I thought you wanted me to—”

“Thank you.” Kenobi says, rushing out of the office, somehow still looking more collected than Anakin feels. The prick. Ah, the same fucking coward, that hasn’t changed a little. Anakin watches the door close, and his chest hurts significantly when the lock clicks closed. Now that the apathy is gone, Anakin wants it back, desperately. He’s got half a mind to chase Kenobi down and have the first go himself, this time.

“Skywalker?”

Wait, what the fuck ever happened to mister? “Yes.”

“Can you please turn around and face me, if it’s not terribly inconvenient?”

“What if it _is_ terribly inconvenient?”

Palpatine doesn’t miss a beat. “My dear boy, I’ll expel you.”

Oh. Well. He shuffles in his chair for longer than necessary, just because pissing off self-entitled old assholes is probably Anakin’s favorite thing to do. When he does look at Palpatine, the hag looks so fucking ready to smack him sideways Anakin can’t help but mirror his previous smile.

“So.”

Palpatine sighs. “So, indeed, Skywalker. _So, indeed_.”

 

* * *

 

By the time the old man lets him go, the sun’s already setting. Anakin feels like he could kill maybe twenty small children and not feel a damn thing. He’s cold, even though his hair and clothes have dried completely.

Palpatine really fucked him over, not like Anakin expected anything else. No suspension, just a month of detention, plus after-hours toilet cleaning, _if_ , and only _if_ , Anakin joins their stupid fucking football team. He’d much rather sit at home for a while, but Shmi would probably tear his limbs off if he actually got suspended. Palpatine and that coach Dooku fucker had been trying to blackmail Anakin into wearing red and blue ever since Anakin had stepped foot into PE. He’s not blind, he knows what he fucking looks like, he knows how tall and menacing (bitch-faced, Ahsoka’s little voice chirps in his head) he gets when he’s pissed. He works out, he lifts, sometimes too much. It’s the one thing that helps him unwind besides Engineering, and, well…sex. But he does it for himself. He’s got zero interest in the false sense of belonging and show case of dud-bro culture of football. Or any other team sport, really. It’s just so fucking _fitting_ , how he’d been managing just fine to doge out of Palpatine and Dooku’s greedy hands until Kenobi got back into the picture.

Speaking of which.

Kenobi’s inside the secretary, leaning into Ms Balboa’s space, telling her about something that’s got a corner of her mouth turned up. Anakin’s never seen the woman look anything other than distressed. Of course. Prince fucking Charming over there could make Satan fall in love with him. Shit, he did, didn’t he? Anakin swallows down the urge to throw a chair at them. He knocks on the glass wall. They both look at him like he caught them fucking. It’s not nearly as satisfying as he thought it would be.

Anakin picks up his backpack from where he’d left it on the floor.

“He told you could go, boy?” Saul—no, Paul—asks him, mop in hand.

“Yes.” Anakin says through his teeth. He’s scared what he’ll say if he lets his mouth run. Too many thoughts about mops and places you can shove them.

“Mm, alrighty, then.” The man shrugs. Oh, the doomed faith of minimum wage employees. They either care too much or too little about their job. Kenobi walks out of the secretary, giving Ms Balboa a final wave. Unlike Anakin’s, his hair is still a little damp. And his fucking stupid white shirt is still clinging to his skin.

Anakin forces himself to look back down at his phone. The screen’s cracked at edges, a little more than it was before this afternoon. A text, three missed calls. The text’s from Pizzahut, but the calls are from Padmé. Shit! _Shit_. Its way past seven, he was meant to call her after, fuck, after his tutoring session. And to think Anakin had joked about calling to assure her no one had died. Yeah, what a fucking laugh, that was. She probably thinks he’s on his way to either prison or the fucking morgue.

“Hey.”

Anakin feels proud of himself for not looking up. And then feels annoyed because that’s embarrassing. “What?”

“C’mon lad, move along.” He hears Paul say.

“Yes, of course, I just—” Kenobi stops, huffing through his nose. Anakin keeps pressing random keys on his phone. He’ll end up texting back Pizzahut something inappropriate. “I don’t know why you’re so angry, Ani, but I’m—I’m sorry.”

 _Fuck_. He doesn’t fucking get to—he can’t—it’s not his _fucking right—_ “You don’t get to call me that.”

“Hey, lads.” Paul warns. But it’s impossible to come between them, always has been, in good ways, and bad ways, too.

“Yes, I do.”

“I hate you.” Anakin says. It comes out before he can think it through, bitterly, like it was ripped out of him. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s what he feels right now, or at least what he desperately wants to feel. Anakin’s so tired, so, _so_ tired, so over his head on dealing with any of this shit. He’s got the emotional quotient of a fucking spoon. Being so close to Kenobi again, talking with him, fighting with him, after what seemed like a lifetime, drained his soul like an HP bar in a video game. He knows he’s close to his limits. His eyes are already stinging. The ugly weight in his chest, the one that settled in a couple of hours ago, and never really left, returns in its full power, making his insides hurt.

Anakin isn’t cold anymore, he’s _burning_. He looks up at Kenobi, who’s being held by a stressed-looking Paul. His eyes are grey, tired, make him look older than he is, like he’s lived a life time of sadness.

“Well, I don’t. You’re my brother, Anakin. I love you.”

And then he shakes himself off the janitor’s grasp. Kenobi walks into Palpatine’s office with his hands firmly fisted by his sides, his shoulders bent backwards, the way he does when he wants to look taller, in control. He doesn’t give Anakin a last glance, doesn’t see the absolute wrecked look on his face.

Anakin’s left staring at the office’s door long after it closes. Silence stretches in the corridor. Even Ms Balboa’s constant tapping on the keyboard has momentarily stopped. Paul reaches out to him, but Anakin flinches. The man’s face falls a little. He lands a hand on Anakin’s shoulder, softly. “These things find a way, boy.”

Anakin cries angry tears the entire drive home.

 

* * *

 


	2. Pick apart the pieces you left, and don't you worry about it

The sky is tainted black as he kills the ignition. He parks in his usual spot, a clearance between two dumpsters next to his building, dark enough to be easily missed, but also close enough that Anakin can regularly check up on his car from his bedroom window. Anakin should stick out like a sore thumb in the state he’s in: eyes rimmed, right cheek bruised like a bitch, tissues shoved up his nose. He doesn’t. The people he walks by barely spare him a glance, aside from a client of Shmi’s who hands him a bag of clothes he needs cleaned by Monday. These fuckers have seen worse. Done worse, too.

The unspoken code of Anakin’s neighborhood allows their inhabitants to be very public about their business, while simultaneously staying out of trouble. You keep quiet about the bullshit you see, they’ll keep quiet about the bullshit you do. Basically, no one gives a fuck about anybody else. It’s simple, it’s easy. Anakin can deal with this kind of thing. It’s all about logic, doing what’s right by you and no one else, because you can trust others will do just the same.

Padmé doesn’t live in Anakin’s neighborhood. Padmé lives in the other side of town, in a house that’s half as big as their fucking _school_ , surrounded by people who’ll talk to her about shit that matters and shit that doesn’t, who want to be involved in every aspect of her life. Padmé knows how to use her head and her heart at the same time, knows how to be tolerant when adopting a certain point of view, how to keep the world grey while distinguishing all its colors.

Which is why she’s sitting on the stairs to Anakin’s building, biting her nails with her knees pressed against her chest. It’s not that she’s unaware of the code, she just chooses to ignore it, again and again. She loves him. She’s entitled to care about his wellbeing.

“Padmé?” Anakin blurts out before he can catch himself.

She looks up at him, her big, brown eyes already making him feel like the shittiest person alive. “Oh, Ani.”

“I was going to—”

The words get caught in his throat when she hugs him. Her curly hair tickles his chin, her thin arms holding him with a strength that never fails to throw him off balance. Anakin has got no clue on how he didn’t fuck up this last good thing, even after they broke up for real. But he knows, deep down, that the credit’s not his to take. Padmé has always known a way around his bullshit. She knows where to blow up the rails when he hops into the Skywalker Isolation Train.

(Kenobi kept him from even boarding the fucking train, his stupid brain adds.)

“Are you alright?” she whispers.

He hugs her back, because he has too, even if it hurts all over. “Yeah.”

Padmé distances herself enough to give him a serious look. “I know what happened.”

“You do, uh.” Anakin’s not really surprised.

“I called the school. Why did you fight?”

He goes to say that he doesn’t know, but swallows it down as anger threatens to flare up inside him again. They’re still outside, exposed for everyone to see. While Anakin benefits from the block’s artificial ignorance, Padmé doesn’t. He doesn’t want her under these people’s eyes.

“Let’s go inside, alright? It’s cold. You’re staying for dinner?”

They walk up the stairs breathing each other’s air, legs moving together. Padmé refuses to untangle herself from him, the way she used to do when they were younger, like she’s scared he’ll run away from her at any given chance.

 

* * *

 

Shmi doesn’t yell at him. She makes him sit still on the couch as she inspects the damage, runs her fingers through his hair softly, asking him how it happened, where it happened, who did it. Anakin answers everything honestly, because he can’t find it in myself to lie to her in front of Padmé, even if it probably would’ve been the smartest thing to do. He’s bullshitted her before, of course he has. There’s shit Shmi will never, _ever_ know about, because Anakin knows it’d break her heart, and finally crush that unwavering faith she and Padmé have in him.

She looks a little shocked when he mentions Kenobi landing the first hit. But apparently she knew they weren’t on the best of terms.

“How?” Anakin asks. He sure as hell hasn’t been discussing that shit with his mother. Telling his shrink he had a “friend” he wasn’t “talking to” nearly made him vomit all over the dude’s fucking shoes.

“He…well, he hasn’t been around here in a while.” Shmi looks hesitant for a second. She glances at Padmé, who’s coming back from the kitchen with a bag of ice in hand. Fuck Anakin in the ear, he knows _exactly_ what that look means.

“You fucking told my mom?” He yells at Padmé.

“Anakin!”

“Not the whole thing, but yes, I did.” Padmé answers calmly, sitting next to him on the couch. She presses the ice against his cheek, ignoring his whining in a way annoys him thoroughly.

“Why the hell—!”

Shmi grabs Anakin’s chin and forces his eyes on her. “Anakin, you were _miserable_. Your doctor is obliged by law to refuse me any information, I didn’t know who else to go to! I tried to call Obi-Wan—”

“You _what_?” Anakin’s pulse picks up again.

“Anakin, he was your best f—” Shmi cuts herself off. “It doesn’t matter, he didn’t answer any of my calls. Padmé was my last resort. It’s ridiculous I even have to reach out to your friends to know what happens to you, so don’t you dare look offended!”

Shit. Okay. Anakin closes his mouth, sinking back into the couch’s pillows. Shmi tries to soften her expression. “Honey, all I know is that the two of you had a disagreement. That’s _all_ I know. I didn’t know it was this serious, though.”

“It’s fine.” Anakin mumbles.

Padmé sighs at the same time Shmi throws her hands in the air. “No, it’s everything _but_ fine! You’re lucky you didn’t get suspended! I know you’ve gotten into fights before, but on school ground? With Obi-Wan, of all people?”

It’s because it’s Kenobi of all people that he got into a fight on school ground, but Anakin keeps that thought to himself. He crosses his arms, well aware of how petulant it makes him look, trying his best to ignore it. He feels vulnerable, and it’s a shit fucking feeling. These two wonderful, wonderful women should be enough to tone down his anxiety.

“I don’t know what you want to hear.” Anakin spits out. He’s such an asshole sometimes, he surprises himself. And that’s really saying something, considering how introverted he is.

“It’s not about what I want to hear.” Shmi says, laying a hand on his knee. It’s a testament to her patient that she didn’t scold him for his tone alone. “It’s about what you feel. What do you feel, Anakin?”

“I don’t know what I feel. Except,” Shmi leans in, nodding her support. Anakin’s thorn between being honest with her and risk a straitjacket, or being cheeky and risk yelling. It’s not much of an argument. “Except, well, my face hurts like a _bitch_ , so there’s that.”

Shmi’s mouth threatens a smile despite her unamused expression. She looks at Padmé with a look that roughly translates into “Can you believe this shit?” to which Padmé’s own stare replies “I know, oh my _god_ ”. They have an entire conversation with their eyebrows. Anakin’s absolutely fascinated, if annoyed that it’s about him. He doesn’t know whether all women are capable of doing that kind of shit, or he was just lucky enough to surround himself with particularly gifted specimens.

“Alright.” Shmi huffs, getting up from the couch. “You won’t talk to me, that’s your call, but I’m doubling your therapy sessions.”

Anakin opens his mouth, and she glares. “Not. Debatable. We’ll discuss further punishment at dinner. I’ve got two baskets of clothes to finish.”

Fucking hell. Anakin’s starting to ponder if he should’ve just let Kenobi kill him in that fucking science lab. That reminds him, he has no idea what the prick’s getting for fighting a freshman. Anakin’s not worried about fairness of treatment, though. The one good thing you can say about Palpatine is that he screws everyone’s lives equally. A real modern day hero.

“You’re an idiot, Ani.” Padmé states after his mother leaves.

“I need a shower” He answers.

She nods, touching his hair. “You’re _definitely_ in need of conditioner.”

Anakin goes to the bathroom with Padmé at his heels, for which he’s silently grateful for. Showers are dangerous places for Anakin and his wild, fucked up imagination. It’s for the best that he isn’t left alone just yet. He undresses in front of her, which gets him nostalgic about different times, but not for long. Padmé’s as affected by the sight of his dick as one is by looking at a cloud in the sky. Even if it’s not the first time she’s seen him naked after their break up, it’s always a relief when it happens and nothing about it is weird. Kind of insulting, though.

Anakin steps inside the shower and lets water pour all over himself, one degree too hot, just as he’s always liked it. Padmé leans against the sink. When the mirror gets foggy enough, she draws a smiley face on it. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“But you will, eventually?

Anakin closes his eyes. “Eventually” he agrees.

There’s a beat in which the only sound echoing in the bathroom is the shower’s running water. Then, Padmé exclaims, “Oh, I forgot to tell you about this!”

She launches into an explanation of the newest student council project. It consists of getting the school’s cafeteria to stay open even through summer break, for those kids that get free lunch stamps from the government during their academic year. While he’s listening to her excited voice ramble on the specifics, his chest swollen with a lot of emotions but mostly affection, Anakin suddenly realizes Kenobi’s fucking calculator might just be inside of his backpack.

 

* * *

 

Shmi screams when she finds him back in the living room. He’s crouched by his backpack, naked and dripping water on the floor, a trail of wet footprints behind him. Padmé is standing right outside the bathroom’s door, hands covering her red face.

“Christ, Anakin, what—”

“I have his fucking Casio!” Anakin yells, brandishing the calculator like it’s Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

 

* * *

 

The weekend goes by like bullet, because Anakin doesn’t fucking want it to, and that is how time works. No matter how shit his life is at home, he dreads going to school on Monday even more than usual. The usual being a fucking _lot_.

The Casio sits on his nightstand daring him to touch it, use it, maybe throw it out of the window and watch it break into tiny little pieces when it hits the ground. He considers the last option for longer than he’s proud to admit. But he knows he can’t go through with it. His boner for the fx-CG20 is bigger than his desire to ruin Kenobi’s shit. So, instead of fucking up a perfectly good 120 dollar machine out of pettiness, Anakin decides he’ll catch up on his robotics. It’s not like he’s got much else to do. Shmi took away his laptop and his gym membership card, and Padmé’s not allowed to come over anymore. That’s pretty much his life right there. Shmi does leave him Kenobi’s calculator, though. Maybe because she thinks it'll help him with school work. The only school work Anakin’s got left to do is Calculus, and he can’t even look at his Calculus textbook without wanting to punch a wall, so. Fuck Calculus, for the time being.

He sits down on his bedroom’s floor, looking for 3-CPO’s initial blue prints. His desk’s drawers are a complete fucking chaos, especially the bottom one, where he tends to throw random shit he finds lying around. So far he’s found a mystery hello kitty sock that’s probably Padmé’s, a McChicken paper wrap that still smells of Caesar dressing, and a bunch of other crap he’d completely forgotten about. You can tell he hasn’t gone through this particular drawer in a while.

Anakin finally finds the blue prints hidden under a bunch of bubble wrap. He pops it absently as he flips through them, grinning to himself when a napkin falls from between the sheets. It’s the very first drawing he did of 3-CPO. A stupidly detailed doodle for a kid. He was what, ten years old? Fuck, it takes him back, it really does. On the back of the napkin he wrote “british!!!!! gold!!!” in very messy handwriting. There’s another drawing that completes that one, another napkin, this one of a drone of some sorts he wanted to call R2-D2. He’s got no fucking clue where he put that one, but it’s probably around here as well.

Sunday night comes in the blink of an eye. He doesn’t find R2-D2’s napkin, though.

 

* * *

 

Padmé calls him the next morning, as he’s pulling over the school’s parking lot. The only available spot is right next to a motorbike Anakin recognizes even before he gets a good look at it. There’s someone up there, call him God if you will, who has it out for him. Someone who just stumbled across Anakin right after he was born and thought to themselves, “I’m gonna fuck up this kid’s life”.

“Fuck me.” he breathes out, letting his head fall onto the wheel.

“Anakin, no.” Comes Padmé’s voice.

Oh shit, right, he was on the phone. “No! No, that’s not—I mean, it’s not you.”

“Not me?” She says, but she sounds amused. “Who is it, then?”

“Ken—o one. No one.” Anakin gets out of his car quickly, his face hotter than a furnace. “I just parked, what’s up?”

“Just wanted to tell you to take it easy today. And that I love you. Text me when you get home, okay?”

Christ, Anakin is yet to meet someone else who makes his heart feel both so full and empty of love. “I will. Me too.” And then they hang up, he’s not sure who does it first, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t feel like he’ll explode at the smallest pressure anymore.

Some kids give him and his shiner a weird look as he walks under the school gates, and Anakin only slightly wants to choke them. He reaches his first class, English, before the second bell rings. People whisper behind his back, but no one goes out of their way to try and directly approach him. Anakin’s learned to appreciate the small victories.

 

* * *

 

Considering he doesn’t see Kenobi all day, and is actually able to answer Mace Windu’s question correctly for once in his fucking life, Anakin fully expects it’ll all come crashing down on his very first football practice… which is his punishment. Football, right, the fucking _sport_ , is Palpatine’s way of punishing Anakin. And that’s not ridiculous at all, because Anakin feels nothing but punished as he’s walking down the field to meet his team.

It’s pretty clear they know what he thinks about them. They could probably smell his animosity from the lockers. It doesn’t help that he’s late, either, but that’s not his fault. _Really_. The teacher who was supposed to give them detention fucked off halfway through and no one knew when and if they were supposed to leave.

“Oh, there you are!” Coach Dooku says. Anakin's always thought the man was too old to coach a sheep, let alone a football team, but he does have nice legs. “Boys, this is Anakin Skywalker, he’ll be a part of the team from now on. We’ll see where he fits. Give him a nice welcome.”

The nice welcome Anakin gets is a bunch of dickheads looking at him like he took all of their sister’s virginities. Seems like they were about to start stretching when he got there. Dooku doesn’t bother explaining Anakin the routine, which he’s kind of grateful for. He already feels like a hooker at Sunday school, what he doesn’t need is further special treatment.

“Yo” a dude to his left says, face red as a lobster as he tries to reach his toes. Anakin recognizes him as the team's captain, from the posters around school. “I’m Maul.”

“Uh, hey.”

“You got punched in the face by Obi-Wan, right? He did that to you."

Anakin’s expression closes-off instantly, and he straightens himself back up, pushing his right thigh against his stomach. _Breathe in, breathe out_. That shrink better be right about this deep breaths bullshit. Anakin can’t afford to cripple the team’s star player three minutes into his first fucking practice. “What the fuck is it to you?”

“Nothing, dude.” Maul says easily. “I heard you did a number on his back. Just wanted to say thanks.”

Thanks, uh. Wait, what? Thanks? Anakin’s so surprised he drops his leg down. “Thanks? What for?”

“Doing what I couldn’t. Me and that asshole, we got some—unfinished business.”

Anakin tells himself it’s got nothing to do with him, but he can’t help but wonder what kind of shit Kenobi pulled with a football player. Maul smiles at him from the ground, all teeth. From this light, his eyes look orange. “Anyone who gets him curved like that is cool in my book.” Maul finishes.

“Okay.” Anakin says, by the lack of something else. This conversation is unsettling him, and he doesn’t know why.

“I’ve got some friends in your neighborhood.”

“You know where I live?”

Maul laughs, coming up to meet his eyes. He’s shorter than Anakin, but his width is massive. He’s built like a brickhouse. “You’re kidding right? The kid who sent Watto to the hospital? You’re a legend, my friend.”

Anakin smirks despite himself. “Somebody had to.”

“Real talk. So, who got you to finally join the team? Me and Griev—that’s the asthmatic fuck over there,” Maul points to a six foot something lanky guy who’s puffing on an inhaler by the benches. He’s on the student council. Padmé says he’s smarter than he looks, if a little messed up. “We were gonna ask you about it, one of these days.”

“Uh, just thought I’d give it a go.” Anakin answers. He doesn’t think this guy would appreciate knowing Anakin is being black-mailed into being here. All of these guys had to go through try-outs and all that shit. He’s lucky enough no one’s brought it up yet.

“That’s such bullshit.” Maul says. He’s still smiling, though, pushing his arms behind his head. “Look, it’s whatever, dude, I don’t really care. I’m just glad you’re here, we needed some horse power.”

That speech right there is how Anakin knows for a fact this guy’s definitely connected to his neighborhood. He’s got that same self-serving, shameless kind of tone everyone else finds rude but Anakin understands. Instead of giving people hopes and expectations, you give them the truth. _I don’t care about you as a person,_ Maul’s saying, _I care about you as a player_. Anakin could’ve told him that Palpatine’s forcing him to play. The guy wouldn’t have batted an eye, probably.

The rest of practice is—fine. Anakin’s a quick learner, even if he gives fuck all about what he’s learning. He’s never watched a football game to save his life, though, so he does mess up a few drills. Other than Dooku, no one else yells at him. Now that the captain’s publicly accepted Anakin in the team, the other guys couldn’t bully him even if they wanted to.

Griev and Maul are bad-mouthed, impolite and rough, and Anakin doesn’t like them, but enjoys their company, nonetheless. They bring the asshole out of him, so naturally it’s like he never tried to be anything else other than the angry kid he truly is at heart.

 

* * *

 

“You need a ride?” Griev asks him as they leave the locker room.

He’s holding both his and Maul’s sport bags, which Anakin finds sort of cute, though he knows better than to comment on it. Griev incites an apprehension that Maul doesn’t. He’s too quiet, too brooding. Pot, kettle, sure, but the guy has an unstableness to him that Anakin doesn’t trust. Not that he trusts Maul, either. Maul is more two faced than a fucking coin. Jesus _fuck_ , it’s like Anakin’s befriending two next level versions of himself.

“Nah, I’ve got my car.” Anakin answers.

“Suit yourself.”

Maul punches Anakin in the arm. Not lightly, he straight up fucking hits him.

“What the fuck, man! Don’t fucking do that!” Anakin yells, rubbing the muscle. Maul smirks at him.

“Settle down, pretty boy.” Maul purrs. Anakin flips him off. “Remember when I said I had friends in Tatooine?”

“…Yeah?”

“I’m meeting them there next Wednesday in a place called Mustafar.”

“The bar? That’s been closed for years.”

Griev looks down at him, face imperceptible. “Not for us, it isn’t.” he says, and Maul nods.

“So swing by, if you want.”

“What’s there to do? Sing karaoke?” Anakin jokes, but stops when he sees Maul and Griev share a private little look. “What _do_ you do there?” he repeats, this time carefully.

Maul’s smirk grows into a full-on grin. “Just drop by, pretty, unless you’re a pussy.”

God, Anakin fucking _hates_ football players, he really does. Always with the pussy insult. Who the fuck cares if he’s a pussy? Tigers are technically pussies, and they’re fucking awesome.

“Sure, I’ll go.” Anakin says, even though he most likely won’t. He’s grounded as all hell, he can't risking Shmi’s wrath more than he already has. Especially for this particular pair of assholes. They wave him goodbye, running ahead to join up with some other bros Anakin didn’t bother learning the names of.

 

* * *

 

When they’re out of his line of sight, Anakin walks back into the school. It’s ten past seven, which means he’s a little late, but Paul’s gonna have to suck it up, or give his complaints to Palpatine. It’s not Anakin’s fucking fault the hag’s _punishing methods_ were all programmed on top of each other.

He takes a paper out of his pocket as he walks faster. Paul gave it to him this morning, as discreetly as he could, which Anakin really appreciated. It’s got his cleaning schedule for the week, written in a table made on Microsoft Word. Anakin can’t imagine the number of kids they have washing floors every week for there to exist a neat printable spreadsheet titled _Disciplinary action 1 - Cleaning of the common areas: WC’s._

He’s gotta admit, though, it feels _very_ professional. Trust Palpatine to charge five quid for a black and white form and give this kind shit for free.

The schedule says Anakin’s gonna be cleaning the girl’s toilets on the second floor. Fucking splendid. He jumps up the stairs two steps at once, because he can, and the school's so empty he doesn't feel too weird doing it. His leg's muscles are cramping like bitches, but Anakin likes the burn. He hasn't been to the gym in a couple of days. It's been long enough that he was beginning to get a little antsy. He didn't _love_ football practice, or anything like that, but between Griev's and Maul's familiar banter, and working up a sweat again, Anakin would say he’s not that miserable right now.

Obviously, it doesn't last. The girl's bathroom is as empty as the rest of the building, no sight of Paul anywhere. He walks out, up and down the corridor, even takes another look downstairs, but nothing. Okay. That's fucked up. He yells out the janitor's name, getting no answer whatsoever.

Anakin enters the girl's bathroom once more, looking at himself in the mirror, wondering if he's got "waste my time" written on his forehead. He grips the sink, attempting to do the stupid breathing exercises again. It's just—he's sweaty. He smells like shit. He hasn't had anything to eat since lunch. The more he thinks about it the more pissed off he gets. Like, if you're not gonna give him something to scrub with, he might as well go the fuck home.

Anakin groans, kicking one of the sinks with all the pent up anger he's got steaming inside. For two seconds absolutely nothing happens. Then, as Anakin turns to leave, the faucet fucking explodes, and a jet of water propels him against the bathroom's wall.

Anakin screams. The water is fucking _freezing_. The jet is so strong, it's drilling a hole into him.

“Son of a— _help_ , _fuck_ —!” he tries to yell, but water gets into his mouth and he gags before any more words can get out. He raises his hands against the water, trying to cover himself enough to get out of there. He's starting to panic just as a hand grabs him by the elbow, pulling him away from the wall.

“I swear to God, I didn’t—I—” Water comes up from his stomach every time he tries to speak.

“Shh, shh, cough it out.”

He's not so far gone that he doesn't instantly recoil at the voice. He blinks his eyes open to see Kenobi inches away from him. His hair is already wet, sticking to his forehead. His eyes are huge, eyelashes glued together, freckles standing out in a way Anakin can't fucking deal with right now. He pushes himself away like he was burned, nearly tripping back into the water jet. Kenobi catches his sweatshirt's pocket, barely, yanking him forward.

“Don’t be stupid” Kenobi says, voice void of all the softness it had. Anakin's sneakers keep slipping on the wet floor, while Kenobi's boots are firm and controlled, like him.

Fuck, why. _Why_. Anakin should've known. From the moment he parked next to this fucker on the parking lot, he should've known. God wouldn't let them be apart for that long. God was waiting for Anakin to fuck up big time just so he could have the second coming of his actual fucking son, our lord and savior, Obi-Wan Kenobi, save Anakin's life.

“Fuck y—!” he gags and bends down, spitting water on the floor. A hand lays hesitantly on his back as he coughs, rubbing circles on him until he stops sounding like he's gonna cough one of his lungs out. Kenobi moves to get away from him, but Anakin reaches out to him before he can fully comprehend what he's doing.

"Wait, okay, I need to get your backpack." Kenobi murmurs.

Oh…oh shit. His backpack. It’s not on his back. The straps must’ve slipped off his shoulders when he hit the wall. He had everything in there, everything. His textbooks, his notepads, his phone, his wallet, Kenobi’s fucking Casio, too. It’s all gotta be ruined by now. How the fuck is he even going to explain that?

Anakin squats down on the floor, holding his face in his hands. The sink is still projecting water like a fireman’s fucking hose. Oh, he’s _fucked_. He’s so, so fucked. Shmi can't afford this type of shit right now. Palpatine will make her replace the sink and fix the fucking pipes, too, if he sees he'll get away with it. Anakin's backpack could dry up, get stitched, whatever, but his textbooks, his notepads, they are all written in pencil, and that shit washes away with water. His phone is probably busted, too. He can't even think about the fx-CG20. So much money. All because he couldn't control his anger for two fucking seconds.

“Hey, hey.” Kenobi's voice gets him off his trance somewhat.

“Leave me alone.”

“You’re shivering, c’mon, get up, we need to go.”

“No, fuck off.”  

“You know what, I just fucking might.”

Anakin expects to hear footsteps splashing away, but instead he listens to Kenobi kneel in front of him, down to his level, literally and figuratively. Anakin peaks at him from the spaces between his fingers. He's way wetter than he was before, but he's holding Anakin's backpack firmly against his stomach, not letting it touch the wet floor. That motherfucker actually went and put himself under the water jet to get Anakin's shitty stuff. Or maybe he knew his calculator was in there. Or maybe Anakin's the worst person in the world.

“Thank you." Anakin blurts out, closing his fingers like shutters, trying to get his heartbeat in check.

Kenobi takes a long breath through his nose, and then slides his arms around Anakin's back, pushing him forward until he loses balance. Anakin crashes against Kenobi's chest, his backpack squashed between them like a sandwich, but he doesn't give a flying fuck about it. It surprises him how little he wants to escape, how little he panics. He lets Kenobi hold him like this has been their relationship for the past ten months. Like it's the most natural thing in the world. Anakin's thigh muscles are screaming at him to stretch them, but he doesn't dare. He doesn't fucking dare to move.

“This is fucking ridiculous.” Anakin states. There's a pipe leaking gallons of water by the second. They should be warning someone. Instead, Anakin presses his nose where Kenobi's jaw meets his neck. He feels so warm. He can't feel his feet anymore, but he's so warm.

Kenobi snorts. The sound vibrates against Anakin's neck. He hasn't heard it in nearly a year. "I know." He says. And after a slight pause "You keep getting me wet, Anakin."

Laughter bubbles out of Anakin’s mouth. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs. He laughs until he's out of breath, until he coughs. Then he stops. He blinks, once, twice. His heart shrinks within his ribcage, and it hurts. Without even noticing, he's brought all of his defenses down, all of them. He's in the arms of someone he's supposed to hate, someone who is meant to make him feel nothing but pain and sadness. And yet, here is, laughing like he hasn't in weeks, yearning to feel more, to get more, to touch more, falling back into love, when it's been five fucking seconds.

“I still hate you.” he says, out of panic, even as he mouths the words against skin. 

Kenobi’s hold of him tightens considerably. “I still don’t.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SORRY!!!!! this is a bit of a filler chapter, i know. i wanted to write about anakin's relationships with other important people before digging into his clusterfuck of a MESS with obi. that shit with maul and griev (who are they lol) is gonna b relevant i promise.  
> thank you so MUCH for all the lovely comments and kudos, i really appreciate it.  
> ily u guys


	3. Floating in the most peculiar way

You don’t receive the love you give. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not an equation, not a concrete thing you can put on a balance and measure, make sure it’s equal, take from one side to put on the other until it’s the same amount on both parts. You don’t know if you ever got as much as you gave, and you never will. It’s part of life, like breathing. When we allow ourselves to love, we walk blindfolded out of a three thousand feet ravine, and we pray to God we’re not the only ones falling.

What Anakin had with Kenobi, whatever the fuck it was, it was fair. But then he went and tipped the scale. And now he’s smashed against the ground, from a three thousand feet fall, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to jump again.

 

* * *

 

Paul finds them. The man takes a long, wide look at the clusterfuck of a mess that’s happening in the toilets, and tells them to fuck off. No, but really, he points a finger at the corridor and says,

“Fuck off, both of ‘ye.”

When they’re both still frozen in place, staring up at him like deer under headlights, Paul huffs, and repeats: “You deaf now, too? Get out of here before you get yourselves expelled. And do me a favor, won’t ye? Try not to be seen, I’d like to keep my damn job.”

Anakin wonders if anyone’s ever died of embarrassment. Like, literally. Because he should have. He should’ve dropped dead the moment Paul walked through that door. _Boom_. Breaking news! Blonde prick dies in gendered toilets after exploding a faucet, in the arms of arch-nemesis and runner up to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Up next, global warming no longer exists, and Jesus Christ has established heaven on earth. Experts claim these events might be correlated.  

Kenobi has to physically hoist him to his feet, because Anakin can’t move his fucking legs anymore. His sneakers slip on the water as he tries to maintain enough balance to keep himself upright, but Kenobi doesn’t let go. He looks like he’s in pain as he bends his shoulders to get a better hold of Anakin. Shit, his back. His back must be sore as all hell. And yet, there he is, willing to serve as Anakin’s personal walking stick. Maybe that Nobel Prize shit isn’t so far off, fuck.

Anakin lets himself be dragged out of the bathroom. Most of his body has gone completely numb. He can’t feel his feet, or his hands, or his nose. Anakin can’t feel anything, except the steady thumping of Kenobi’s heart thumping against his back.

 

* * *

 

 

They try their best to go unnoticed. They really do. It’s hard to be stealthy when you’re dripping water everywhere and your sneakers screech like they’re being subjects of some form of Russian torture. Anakin and Kenobi are like Bourne and Bond, respectively, obviously, if Bourne and Bond were a lot less suave. And had a lot more homoerotic subtext. Not that the whole thing with Q wasn’t gay, Anakin thinks absently.

“You think I could pull off Bourne?” He whispers out of nowhere, glued to Kenobi’s back, where they’re hiding behind a column in the school’s great hall. They’re waiting for a group of cheerleaders to stop taking selfies and fuck off the main entrance. Anakin doesn’t blame them, though, he too would take a billion pictures of himself if he looked that hot in a mini skirt.

Kenobi laughs, and Anakin feels it echo in his ribcage. “Of course.”

“Why?” he insists.

“Well, you brood nicely, for one thing.”

Anakin should feel insulted.

“Thanks.” He deadpans, or at least tries. He can hear his own smile melt into the words like ice cream under hot chocolate.

The cheerleaders finally, _finally_ move out of the way after fifteen minutes that to Anakin seemed more like twelve fucking hours. They hop off giggling and smiling in their god damned high heels like they _know_ the amount of lives their Instagram posts will ruin. Anakin realized two things while he hid behind that column: one, the best angle to take a selfie with is the slight tilt, under the lashes look. Two, Kenobi still uses the same fragrance of Old Spice Anakin gave to him for Christmas when he was like, fifteen. The latter does not help with the current session of twist and lurch his stomach is going through. In fact, Anakin thinks he might have given himself indigestion.

“Anakin.”

“Uh, sure.” He says, eloquently. Kenobi narrows his eyes at him over his shoulders.

“You weren’t listening.”

“I was.”

“Alright, then what did I say?”

Fucking hell, is this Kenobi or Mace Windu Anakin’s platonically holding onto?

“You said that…uh.” The words stop coming out of his mouth because his eyes decide to blur everything around the edges and focus on a small cut Kenobi has on his left cheek. Right, right, he _shaves_. That’s kind of funny. Anakin forgets Kenobi’s like, a young _adult_ sometimes. Maybe he should grow out a beard. And a mullet. Fuck, the asshole could probably rock a mullet, too.

“Christ’s sake.” Kenobi mutters, and pulls him from behind the column. They Naruto-run out of the school, looking like absolute idiots, soaked and grinning in the cold, swaying against each other.

By some fucking miracle, no one shouts after them, no one’s left as witness other than God and Paul—who’s God to Anakin at this point.

Anakin usually curses Kenobi’s unfaultable luck to the fucking sunset, but not today. Today, he’s glad he gets the fucker’s good karma rubbed on him, too. The two of them must add to a big round zero. That’s how math works, isn’t it? One negative plus one positive is nothing. Zero.

There are actual tears when Anakin’s car emerges behind the parking lot’s bushes. The beaten up, shitty Opel is suddenly the best thousand dollars Anakin’s ever spent, even with the dick keyed on the hood that he only discovered three weeks after buying it. Even with that poorly drawn phallic abomination, his car is a beautiful, heaven-given gift. Anakin promises himself that he’ll go to that stupidly expensive car wash just to show his baby how much she’s appreciated.

He opens the front pocket of his backpack, letting out a breath of relief when he feels his keys. It’s a blessing he instinctively shoves them there and not inside the main bag. Having to face everything that’s ruined, and possibly damaging it further, is not something Anakin needs right now.

Another thing that Anakin doesn’t fucking need right now is the way his hands are shaking. He can’t seem to get the thing in its fucking hole. Which, for the record, is a problem he does not have, _ever_ , thank you very much _._ This bitch ass key is not going in at all, though _._ All he’s doing is scratching the paint job around the lock. The possibility of breaking into his own god damned car pops up in his head just as a hand settles behind his neck.

“Let me.” Kenobi says, voice soft. He takes the keys off Anakin’s shivering hands, sliding them into the lock in one fluid motion. Anakin’s face grows really warm. Not the welcomed kind of warm. An angry warm. Anakin hopes Kenobi hasn’t noticed how still he is. He hopes the night’s sky is dark enough to disguise the red that’s spreading all the way down his chest.

Kenobi opens the car’s door. “Go on, then, get inside.”

Anakin’s whole being constricts within itself. It’s like a bomb goes off inside of him. He tries to tone down the impact, keep it bellow his throat, swallow it until it rests unsettled on his stomach. But he _can’t_. Not after all that’s happened. His emotions overtake him like he’s shot them up his veins. “Fuck, stop telling me what to do!”

Kenobi furrows his eyebrows, blinking at him. “What—I’m not—what on earth are you going on about?”

“It’s my car! It’s my fucking car! You couldn’t even let me open the door!”

“I was trying to help!”

Anakin laughs, an ugly, raspy thing that bubbles off him and resonates in the empty parking lot.  He kicks the car door closed. Kenobi stumbles a step back, which isn’t even remotely satisfying. “Yeah, you’re always trying to help, aren’t you? That’s the fucking problem.”

He knows he’s being a dick. He knows. But the tension was bound to snap, bound to eat him whole. Anakin could’ve done one of two stupid things. This was the better alternative, trust him, it was. The last time he took the other route, he and Kenobi didn’t acknowledge each other’s existence for nearly a fucking year.

“I want you to get warm, how’s that a prob—”

“No!” Anakin screams. “No! It’s not about what you say, it’s the way you say it! Ordering me around, like I’m some bi—”

Kenobi punches the side of the Opel. It’s abrupt enough to make Anakin jump slightly in his toes. “There you go again with that crap, I don’t order you around!”

“Yes, you do!”

“Fine! Fine. Tell me how to talk to you, then!”

Anakin can’t help it, he laughs again. It sounds crazy. “You just fucking did it again.” He rises the pitch of his voice to match the hilted tone of Kenobi’s posh accent. He’s starting to look insane, but he’s also starting to care less and less about it “Tell _me_ , get _in_ , do _this_ , do _that_ —”

“You know what, fuck this. I’m bloody cold.” Kenobi growls. Then he stomps around the car, storming inside the shotgun seat, muttering unintelligible shit as he slams the door closed.

What the fuck? That’s not fair. That’s not fair, at all. That’s Anakin’s fucking car. The prick could’ve hopped on his James Dean snooty bike and fucked off Anakin’s life but no, _no_ , of course not. He’s entitled to everything that Anakin owns, including Anakin himself, he can just use whatever he wants, whenever he likes.

Okay, so maybe Anakin is exaggerating a little, but that’s the general premise. It’s not like Anakin can tell him to get the hell out. Kenobi nearly drowned himself to get Anakin’s backpack from under that fucking water cannon. Anakin’s the reason he’s cold in the first place. Kenobi didn’t have to help him.

The wind begins to blow harder. Anakin considers hypothermia. Like, what’s the worst thing that can happen? He dies. Big fucking deal. If it spares him from alone car time with that son of a bitch, he’ll take it. Let death come. It’ll finally give him leverage, too. Like, I preferred _death_ to your company, sucker, that’s how fucking awful you are, you ginger cunt.

A knock startles him from his very unproblematic, completely healthy thoughts. He looks down at the car. Kenobi rolls down the window, kind of slowly because he can barely reach the handle from where he’s sitting. It makes Anakin bite back a smile. Of all the fucking things, that’s what finally eases down his nerves. Figures.

“Hey.” Kenobi says, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. “Would you please take the decision, in a completely unilateral, independent manner, to get in the bloody car? If, of course, it suits your desires.”

It’s the second time he says ‘ _bloody’_. Anakin enjoys knowing that he’s annoying enough to bring the British out of people.

“Okay.” He says “I will. Since it’s unilateral and independent.”

Kenobi’s indignant huff is enough to seal the deal.

 

* * *

 

At first they’re in complete, fucking silence. Anakin’s turned on the AC, in the highest possible temperature, and they glue their hands to the vents, watching the windshield fog as the seconds pass. No one says anything. Anakin wants to cough, but even that feels like too much. The artificially warm air envelops them in an atmosphere tight enough to tip into suffocating.

They reach for the radio at the same time, fingers brushing together for a millisecond, before yanking them back into their seats like they were shocked. It’s so fucking awkward, Anakin’s already regretting not dying of hypothermia.

“Uh.”

“Please, go ahead.”

“Of course I’ll go ahead, it’s my fucking car.” Anakin mutters, smashing the _On_ button on the radio.

Kenobi sighs. “Yes, we’ve settled that, Anakin.”

“Then how come you were gonna mess with the radio?”

“Because—Anakin, for Christ’s sake I can’t—”

“Just because I let you—”

They both close their mouths shut when the guitar riff resounds through the speakers, as clearly as the Opel’s shitty sound system allows it. A slight pause, and then:

_Only you,_

_Can make all this world seem right._

Fuck. Anakin completely forgot about this. He forgot he’d been listening to this particular album, to this particular _song_ , on his way to school. He can’t find a single way to justify himself, other than he thought he’d be safe to do it in the privacy of his own vehicle. He felt like playing it, so he did. How the fuck could he ever have guessed that he’d end up with Kenobi sitting by his side, especially in the state they’re in? He couldn’t have. It doesn’t mean he’s not freaking the fuck out right now.

“It’s—”

“Yeah, it fucking is.”

_Only you,_

_And you alone,_

_Can drill me like you do._

Anakin buries his hands under his armpits, drowning his body into his seat as much as possible, wishing he could just melt in it until he becomes one with the leather.

“I haven’t heard it in a while.” Kenobi whispers. Fuck, but he sounds so soft.

Anakin risks a glance, and finds Kenobi already looking at him, _really_ looking at him, the way he used to before it all went to shit. So fucking fond of Anakin, always, no matter how fucked up Anakin got, how angry, Kenobi never stopped regarding him with the same eyes, like Anakin was the fucking Chosen One, the one good thing in his life.

And this is exactly how it happened. Exactly how Anakin got it all wrong, saw feelings where they didn’t exist. He won’t make that mistake twice.

He goes to turn off the radio, or change the song, just do _something_ to stop it, but Kenobi grabs his hand. “Please, don’t.”

_When you hold my hand,_

_I understand_

_The magic that you do._

“Let me go.”

“It’s alright, just listen.”

“Fucking l _et me go!_ ”

It’s quickly becoming too much for Anakin to handle. He wants out. He _needs_ out, desperately. He doesn’t know what will happen if he stays. He doesn’t want to find out. Anakin’s so fucking scared. He’s been scared most of his life, but this, this is a different type of fear. The fear of hope. The fear of chance. The fear of good things that do not last.

“Calm down.”

“No, no, I can’t—just—”

“Anakin, it’s alright.”

“No, I—fuck, just _let me go.”_

“Ani” Kenobi laces their fingers together and Anakin panics.

“You broke my fucking heart!” he screams, and then repeats, more hushed, like he can’t believe he just said it. His voice breaks on the last syllable, and he knows he’s crying. “You broke my fucking he _art”_

Kenobi freezes, for a second, mouth hanging open without any sound coming out. Then he pulls Anakin towards him, as easily as you’d pull dead weight, because Anakin is too drained to struggle anymore. Kenobi puts his hands on Anakin’s face, his thumbs hovering Anakin’s cheekbones, his fingers tangling into Anakin’s messy hair.

It feels like the whole Universe stopped. Like nothing exists outside of Anakin’s shitty car, like they’re floating above time and space, trapped inside their infinite sadness. Anakin wishes it was so. He wishes he could cease to exist. He wouldn’t die happy, but he wouldn’t die alone, either.

“I know.” Kenobi says “I know, but I’ll fix it, Ani, even if it kills me.”

_You’re my dream come true,_

_My one and only you._

 

* * *

 

**(7 years before)**

 

* * *

“Look at that!” Obi-Wan yelled happily. Anakin dropped the box full of pacifiers he’d been studying and ran towards him.

“What is it? Is it something dead? Is it a person?” He asked excitedly, but got no answer. Obi-Wan was crouched near what had to be the weirdest object Anakin had ever seen. It was some sort of suitcase with a circular plate on it that looked like a crepe maker, and had a crank stick kind of thing coming out from the side.

“What the fuck is that?” Anakin asked. He was clearly disappointed. Whatever that was, it looked like some old crap you couldn’t do shit with.

“This, young one, is a gramophone.”

Anakin rolled his eyes at the nickname. “You promised you’d stop calling me that when I turned ten!”

Obi-Wan smirked at him. “Oh I did? I can’t remember.”

“Whatever, liar. What’s a grandmaphone?”

He squatted by Obi-Wan’s side, grabbing his shoulder for balance. Obi-Wan huffed. “ _Gramophone_. This one is rather modern, but the old ones had a huge horn on them.” Anakin just stared at him, unimpressed. Obi-Wan tried again, “You play music with it.”

“Mm.” Anakin regarded the thing with newfound curiosity. “Did you have one of these?”

“Yeah, my grandma had one.”

“England is so weird.”

Obi-Wan laughed. “Yeah, I know.”

He took the thing off the box it was on top of, putting it on the floor. The box burst open, scaring the living shit out of Anakin and making him fall backwards. He blindly grabbed onto Obi-Wan’s shoulder, dragging him down with him. They laughed, noses bumping. Obi-Wan’s breath smelled like the sauce of the meatballs they’d had for lunch.

“You’re so jumpy, Ani.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes, pushing Anakin off him. “One of these days Yoda is gonna make you eat soap, mate.”

“You swear too, asshole!”

“Not as much.” Obi Wan said presumptuously. His weird accent made everything he said sound beautiful, even swearing, but Anakin wasn’t going to tell him that.

Obi-Wan peeked into the box. Anakin looked at his back, propped up in his elbows.

“Oh my goodness”

“I bet it’s lame.” Anakin said, giggling.

Obi-Wan ignored him. He put his hands inside the box, rummaging through its mystery items. It did sound interesting, damn it. Anakin couldn’t help himself. Biting down his annoyance, he crawled next to Obi-Wan and peeked inside the box.

Inside of it there were dozens of things that looked a lot like CD’s, and a lot like something else altogether. They were shaped like circles, and had a hole in the middle, which was normal CD stuff, but were also black instead of silver, and way, _way_ bigger.

“What the—”

“These are all vinyl, can you believe this?” Obi-Wan said excitedly.

“I think you’re making up words.” Anakin muttered. But he had to admit they looked pretty cool.

Obi-Wan picked out one that had The Platters written on the center.

“I’m so not, you play them on the gramophone! Look.” he grabbed the grandma phone’s crank, turning it quickly.

“Wow, very cool.” Anakin teased.

Obi-Wan flipped him off. He let go of the crank, and put the big, black CD on top of the crepe maker plate thing. Then he placed a needle right in the middle of it. For a moment nothing happened.

“Maybe it’s broken?” Anakin said, seeing Obi-Wan’s disappointed expression. He liked being right about the grandma phone being useless, but he didn’t like it when Obi-Wan’s eyes fell like that.

“Yeah, maybe.”

But then music started, so suddenly Anakin yelped.

_Only you,_

_Can make all this world seem right._

It was coming out of the suitcase, somehow, and it didn’t sound shitty at all. It sounded smooth, raspy in a very pleasant way. The voice was something out of those old radio shows Yoda liked to listen to sometimes, like a trip to the past.  “Holy shit!” Anakin explained.

“Right?”

Anakin traced the grandma phone with his fingers, sticking his ear against it to understand where exactly the sound was coming from. He looked at Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan grinned back at him.

“C’mon.” He held out a hand in Anakin’s direction.

“What?”

“Dance with me.”

Anakin huffed out a laugh. “I’m not dancing with you, you ginger— _shit_ ”

He couldn’t finish his incredible comeback, because Obi-Wan grabbed him by his arms, pulling him up so roughly he didn’t have a choice but to grab onto his best friend for dear life. Obi-Wan’s hands fell from his arms to the small of his back. Anakin drew his head back to yell at him, but the intent died when he saw the way he was being looked at.

“Yes, you are.” Obi-Wan said, his fingers opening slightly into Anakin’s skin.

“Okay.” Anakin breathed out, feeling as if he was being held by the sun itself.

 

* * *

 

Seven years ago, in the attic of the orphanage, to the sound of The Platters, they danced.

 

* * *

 

 

Now, in Anakin’s car, to the sound of The Platters, they cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im..........sorry........ my boys are hurting so much...... but hey!! revelations galore amirite!! tried to focus this chapter more on obikin. is this a slow burn fic?? i feel like everything is burning all the time. oh, and if ur wondering about anakins dramatic mood swings, my dude has bipolar tendencies. i feel like it goes well with his character. wont take no neurotypical bull with my dark baby. obi wan is just.... really tired i guess.  
> their song is Only you (and you alone) by The Platters. i wrote the car part to be in sync with it, so i recommend playing it as anakin turns on the radio.  
> once again, thank you so so SO FCKN mUCH for all the love. this was a difficult chapter to write. whenever i needed motivation i just read the comments :)  
> and also NEW PLAYLIST HELLO: http://8tracks.com/4k144p/r-e-t-r-o-g-r-a-d-e  
> i love yall


	4. Do you remember the way it let you feel?

Kenobi holds his face for who even knows how long. Anakin still feels like he’s floating somewhere far away from here, miles up into space, where time is an illusion and no one cares about the things you did wrong. You’re a particle afloat in the Universe and not the object of other people’s expectations. You’re not responsible for pain because you’re not responsible for anything. Anakin just exists, with all his flaws, and no one gives a single fuck. It’s strange that he’s sharing this moment of peace with Kenobi, considering Kenobi has incited everything but peace for the past year. Shit, Anakin was on the brink of a panic attack like, five minutes ago.

 _The Best of The Platters_ keeps playing on the radio, undisturbed, the sixties early rock’s swing mere background noise in Anakin’s ears. The main voice, the lead singer of the mantra inside of his head, is sitting right in front of him, leaning his forehead against Anakin’s and saying _I’ll fix it, Ani, even if it kills me_ a hundred times over.

“Oh, I know this one.” Kenobi says, lowly, eyes closed, puffing a breath on Anakin’s face.

Anakin hums. He recognizes the song, too, but he doesn’t pay attention to it. His fingers grip the car seat tighter. Fuck, he can’t stop staring at the lines on Kenobi’s lips, the way they dip outwards like all mouths do, but differently, somehow, inviting in a way that refuses to be ignored. Anakin’s leaning in before he realizes what he’s doing, transfixed by the barely-there slit of space in Kenobi’s mouth, thinking that he could, maybe, just fucking maybe, fit his lower lip there. Anakin’s nose slides along Kenobi’s, and Kenobi’s hands tighten under his jaw, thumb digging into bone, breathing heavily. Then his eyes shot open.

He pushes Anakin’s face a couple of inches away. “Hey.”

“What.” Anakin drawls, voice hoarse like he’s got a cold. He feels so fucking tired. But the six am kind of tired. Your body hurts and your eyes sting but your mind is going three hundred miles per hour. It takes him a second to process the way Kenobi has furrowed his eyebrows. “Oh. Uh. I—I wasn’t—I don’t—your breath stinks.”

And that does it. That breaks the spell, whatever it was. Anakin falls back to earth like the wreckage of a spaceship, collides into the Pacific Ocean as Kenobi narrows his eyes at him. “It does not.”

“Trust me, it does.” Anakin’s heart is hammering, but he keeps his expression as deadpanned as possible. He buries the last sixty seconds in the time-out corner of his mind, along with other moments that, funnily enough, all relate to Kenobi in some way. This is not comfortable anymore. Their little bubble burst and the things they said hang in the air around them denser than humidity, prickling Anakin’s nerves. Fuck, he almost… he was about to... fuck. He needs to go home. He looks down at the gear shift between them, and then at the way his white knuckled hands grab onto the seat. The gentle hold around his face has stopped being comforting to become increasingly suffocating.

“I need to go home.”

Kenobi mutters something Anakin can’t make out. Strands of his hair are firmly tucked behind his ears, which tickles his earlobes and makes his shoulders hunch abruptly. He hears a throaty chuckle. Yeah, Anakin’s still ticklish there, what fucking gives, _prick_.

“Alright” Kenobi agrees, finally dropping his hands, first to Anakin’s neck, sliding down the curve of his shoulders, before letting his arms fall by his sides. Anakin pointedly ignores the different kind of tickling that incites from him, how his toes curl into his feet inside his soaked sneakers.

He looks up when Kenobi opens the door. They’re both as dry as they can get, with the vents of the Opel’s AC still blowing air in full power, but the cold rush that comes from outside makes him shiver immediately. The thermal shock between the burning heat inside the car and the chilly wind blowing outside is three fucking kinds of ironic. Also, Anakin thinks bitterly, a good representation of what it’s like to be in his shoes.

“Wait!” he barks suddenly, as he turns on the ignition, already facing the wheel.

Kenobi looks back at him. His eyes are very grey under this light, if a little red rimmed. “Yes?”

“I’ll pay you back, okay?”

“Pay me back? Pay me what?”

“The fx-CG20. The Casio. It was inside my backpack.” Anakin makes a motion at the still-dripping Eastpak he’d thrown onto the backseats. “I was gonna give it back, but, uh. You know…”

He’ll have to sell a fucking kidney to afford that, or two, fuck it, but he means it. Kenobi blinks, and then turns angry, for some reason. “No.” He growls out, pushing himself out the car, “I don’t care about the bloody calculator, Anakin. Talk to me again, and you can consider the debt paid.”

Anakin opens his mouth to protest, but Kenobi slams the door closed, effectively shutting him up. Okay, it’s a nice statement and all, but that’s not the gate of a fucking farm, God. The poor Opel cannot take all these dramatic exits.

Anakin slides his hands across the wheel, feeling the motor drum beneath his palms. Kenobi unlocks the luggage box of his disgustingly cool Yamaha, taking off the helmet and slotting it up his arm. He hops into the bike, feet barely touching the ground, and _fuck_ , but Anakin can’t tear his eyes off the way he straddles the leather seat like a horse, thighs going each side with ease. Kenobi grinds his ass into place, and Anakin grips the wheel so tightly he ends up blasting the fucking horn.

It makes them both jump. Kenobi loses balance, and flails his arms everywhere, trying not to fall of the bike. It should’ve been hilarious, but Anakin is too busy wondering when the hell his legs spread apart like that to properly laugh at the image.

The radio is playing _Heaven on Earth_. Anakin punches the device until it shuts the fuck up.

 

* * *

 

Shmi didn’t expect him home so early. She lets out a startled yelp when Anakin walks into the laundry room, dragging his backpack behind him, resembling a fucking crack addict with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks.

She immediately asks him what happened, her arms crossed, eyes hardening over a badly masked layer of worry. It’s clear that she expects him to have fucked up in some way, _again_ , which is both fair and really, _really_ upsetting.

Anakin lies. It comes to him more naturally than describing the fucking weather. Mostly because Padmé and her big doe eyes aren’t there to bully decency into him. And his lies aren’t even proper lies, either. A faucet randomly exploded in his face and they sent him home. That’s like, a hundred percent facts. Sure, _he_ was the one who exploded the faucet. And Paul pulled a Jesus-Ex-Machina and covered for him and Kenobi. Whatever, he’s told her worse bullshit than this. Shmi didn’t fact check him then and she won’t fact check him now.

 _You’re prone to manipulation,_ the shrink comments idly in Anakin’s head as he talks. His mother’s strict expression eventually morphs into sympathy, and Anakin only feels slightly uncomfortable when she cradles him against her arms.

 

* * *

 

 

So, not all of his shit is fucked. Anakin discovers this after dropping the contents of his backpack on his bedroom’s floor, unceremoniously, the way you’d rip of a band aid. Or a wax stripe. (Padmé liked him smooth, okay. Since he liked her smooth too, it was only fair.)

His Calculus’ manual has its cover ripped in half, and his notepad is literally a clammy parallelepiped. Other than that, nothing’s too ruined that he won’t be able to use after it dries. The only reason Anakin even needs a new Calculus manual is because he’s pretty sure Mace Windu would fucking shit himself if Anakin showed up to class with this one. And that reminds him, the Casio. It works. It honest-to-God, actually fucking _works_. Anakin turns it on and the color display is still as clean as an Iphone’s menu. This is probably due to the fact that it belongs to Kenobi, and not him. Were the fx-CG20 his, it would have burst into flames and burned his backpack to ashes.

Anakin stays on the floor next to the calculator until Shmi yells at him to go shower. He doesn’t have a “debt to pay” anymore. He doesn’t need to talk to Kenobi again. But that doesn’t sit well with him. Kenobi has a right to know his calculator is still in one piece. He said he didn’t care, but Anakin _does_ care. Having the calculator in his possession bothers him in more ways than he can explain. He just wants to get rid of it. Perhaps because he can’t look at the Casio without thinking about two particular recent occasions in the past few days that caused him a lot of pain. Perhaps because it’s a direct link to Kenobi himself, and Anakin is too fucking contradictive to properly assess whether he likes that or not.

 

* * *

 

 

 _Casio is fine,_ he ends up texting the prick, sitting on the toilet with a towel wrapped around his hips. He stares at the old ass, bright pink Motorola flip phone Shmi lent him to replace his drowned Nokia (rest in peace). Although, it’s pretty cool to sling the top of the flip phone open and then throw it back closed. He does it a couple of times. He’s such a fucking idiot. But the motion actually helps toning down his anxiety, so who cares. Suddenly, the phone buzzes and Anakin swears. Then he sneezes.

“Bless you!” Shmi calls out from outside.

“Thanks.”

“Get a move on, alright? Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Yes, ma.”

He flips the phone open. _Still got you saved under Padawan._

That fucking _prick._

 

* * *

 

 

**(6 years before)**

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t get this game!” Anakin whined, tying the bathrobe around him as they walked. He secretly thought he looked kind of badass. Very secretly. Better than Obi-Wan, that was for sure. Dude put on a beige parka that made it seem like he was going for some sort of racist Mexican vibe.

“I’m not gonna explain it to you again.” Obi-Wan said grumpily, strutting out into the backyard. He’d found a couple of broken umbrellas in the attic that had made him really excited. Anakin could admit to a certain degree of mild curiosity.

“So, I’m your—pan-damn?” he started, but Obi-Wan let out a laugh that made him stop. The sky was cloudy, dark even, which wasn't weird because it was November. Ahsoka was sitting on the porch’s stairs, furiously hitting a doll against the floor, making giggly noises. Anakin ignored her. Ever since she learned how to walk she wouldn’t leave him out of her sight for more than a fucking second.

“It’s _Padawan_. And I’m your master.”

“What the fuck? Why do you get to be the master?”

“Because I’m older.” Obi-Wan gave him a lopsided smile. He threw one of the umbrellas at Anakin, the red one. Anakin opened his mouth to bitch about wanting the blue one instead, but thought better of it. Obi-Wan teased him all the time for being a whiny brat, and Anakin wanted to erase that image of himself. He was eleven, now, he wasn’t a kid anymore. Ahsoka cackled happily, like she could hear his thoughts, and he glared at her. Stupid babies.

“Whatever.” he groaned “What’s this for?”

“Sparring. It’s your lightsaber”

Anakin couldn’t help it, he smirked. “You’re such a nerd, Obi-Wan”

Obi-Wan’s ears reddened immediately. It was a sweet trick Anakin had learned after countless hours of throwing snark at each other. Obi-Wan didn’t pout or fret like Anakin did, so every little sign of embarrassment was a victory. He spared Ahsoka a glance, and then mouthed “fuck off” to Anakin.

“You fuck off” Anakin said out loud, twirling the closed umbrella in the air. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes.

They climbed on top of a tree, and Anakin decided to stop being a dick and get his head around the game. Even with Ahsoka crying from the ground, jumping on her little toes around the grass, it was fun. It was always fun with Obi-Wan. They piloted a great ship Obi-Wan called an X-Wing Fighter, which was a fucking sweet name, by the way, strong and fast into the enemy lines, destroying the Empire’s forces until they surrendered to their great amount of ass kicking. They called themselves the Legendary Duo. At some point, Obi-Wan took pity on Snips, and adapted the scenario to fit her into the picture. Anakin complained, but Obi-Wan made a deal to shut him up. He’d be a Master too, if he took Snips as his Padawan. Pretty fair deal. Obi-Wan wasn't the Negotiator of the Resistance for nothing.

So, they climbed off the tree, and Anakin picked the kid up from the grass, screaming when she immediately closed her fists in his hair and pulled.  "Ow, _fuck_ —Obi-Wan!"

Obi-Wan shook his head at him disapprovingly. "Language." he muttered, scowling. Then he looked down at the kid and drew the most dazzling smile Anakin had ever seen him do. It wasn't directed at him but he still felt irradiated. "Snips, love, let him go, yeah?"

"Gah?" she said, equally transfixed, and unhanded Anakin's hair to thrust her hands at him..

"There you go." Obi-Wan said softly, letting her hook her fingers around his thumb.

Anakin swallowed, looking at Snips as well. May as well take the shot while the little monkey's distracted. "You want to be my padawan, kid?"

She giggled. Anakin decided she was cute for a baby. Stupid, but cute. Still monkey-ish. Grabbing her tightly to his chest, he pointed his lightsaber up at space, and grinned. "Let's kick some storm soldier ass!"

"Stormtrooper." Obi-Wan corrected instantly, but followed after him nonetheless.

Hours later, Yoda had almost gone into cardiac arrest when he saw the state of their clothes. But it didn't matter one bit. Snips had blurted out her first ever word, _light_ , sitting between them on the grass, each of her hands closed firmly on their robes.

 

* * *

 

 

( **present** )

 

* * *

 

Getting up from the toilet, Anakin quickly types back, _Still got you saved under i dont fckn care._

 

* * *

 

The little sleep Anakin manages to get that night has him waking up at three in the morning, wet between his thighs, breathing harshly out of his nose. He wonders why he can never do shit halfway. He wonders if leather burns when you rub it against skin, or if that was just his imagination running wild. The back of his legs still fucking stings. Usually, Anakin has some difficulty recalling his dreams, but not this one. This one is gonna be engraved deep within his brain. And it’s no fucking wonder why. Anakin can barely grip onto reality while he’s awake. Sleep is like his brain’s god-damned Holy Grail. He gets to do whatever he wants. It’s like a gateway into Anakin’s primal urges, only without the social constricts of the world constantly telling him he’s messed up.

He lets himself collapse back on the mattress. This is exactly why he sleeps naked. His chest is slick with sweat. He goes to run his fingers through his hair, but it’s matted to his skin. Fuck, when he took a shower, too. Maybe he needs a new one. A cold one. He moves his thighs together and—yeah, _shit_ , he definitely needs a new one. Refusing to jerk off was a stupid idea. He’d been harder than a fucking pole when he went to bed, and falling asleep like that had been torture. He should’ve known. His brain wouldn’t spare him that easily. If he couldn’t do it awake then he could do it asleep. And fuck, he did do it. He did it a _lot_.

Anakin closes his eyes, willing his breaths to get quieter. His head seriously fucking hurts, and his forehead is burning. When he tries to inhale, his nose becomes kind of runny. The beginning of a cold, maybe, with his luck.

He’s about to get up when the phone buzzes on his nightstand. He flips it open, squinting when the light’s way too fucking bright against his eyelids, worsening his headache. It’s a text. It’s Kenobi’s. Jesus fucking _Christ_ , give him a break. He hadn’t answered Kenobi’s reply to his own flippant message before, a simple _okay, ani_. This one is a bit longer.

_I think we need to have a conversation without water involved. Sorry it’s late._

Anakin clicks his tongue and texts back: _Y are u txtng me at 3am_

He only has to light up the screen four times to see a new message _. Woke up randomly sorry :(_

This is some serious spiteful God at work here. Unless Kenobi is selling him bullshit. He turns on his stomach, eyes too sore for him to look up any longer. Something coils in the pit of his belly when his hips shift against the sheets. He grinds his teeth together, hoping the overall nausea that’s slowly overtaking him is enough to distract him from how horny he is.

_We can’t fucking have a conversation Kenobi_

_Why not?_

Anakin lifts his chest to prop himself on his elbows. It’s a stupid decision. The pressure on his dick grows and Anakin has to bite the inside of his forearm to keep sounds from leaving his throat. Fuck, he’s so _dizzy_. There’s sweat dripping down his back. It’s like he swallowed a fucking red giant, and it’s exploding into a supernova. His skin’s radiating so much heat you could fry an egg on him.

The phone buzzes before he can recover from the absolute wave of pain that assaults the nape of his head.

_Anakin, why not?_

His fingers are clicking buttons within nanoseconds, fat and uncoordinated on the small keyboard. It’s like he’s watching himself reply, he can’t do anything to stop it.

_Because I just dreamed of fucking you agains t th e leather seat of ur fcking bike_

He runs to the bathroom after that, but to throw up his dinner into the toilet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just realized i forgot to say something lol  
> anyway:  
> its getting hot in here~~ so take off all ur clothes~~  
> and throw up in the toilet~~  
> i s2g im the most anticlimactic fanfiction writer of the century. and not even in a good way.  
> im trying to make this seem as gradual as possible, which is kind of difficult in my style, but hey, fuck me right. basically, anakin cant spend 5 minutes with obi-wan without envisioning bike sex. have u guys seen ewan mcgregor on a bike tho like,,,,,,,  
> hope ur enjoying the orphanage throwbacks!! idk wtf im doing lol  
> THANK YOU SOOOO much for all the love, its been great yall, im so grateful. xx  
> playlist: http://8tracks.com/4k144p/r-e-t-r-o-g-r-a-d-e


	5. They say it comes in threes: love, hope and misery

Anakin wakes up with a pair of hands holding his face gently. His heartbeat picks up immediately, but the fingers quickly become too slender, the hands too small. He can’t help the overwhelming wave of actual fucking  _disappointment_  that assaults him when he opens his eyes and Shmi is staring down at him, concern written in the harsh wrinkles of her mouth.

She’s talking, but he can’t make out the words. It’s like he’s underwater, and she’s speaking from the surface, nothing comes through except a humming, foggy noise, and blinding light. Anakin squints around. Apparently, because he has officially embraced upper-class-forty-year-old-mom-culture at the tender age of seventeen, he passed out on the bathroom floor after emptying his stomach from last night’s lasagna. Shmi’s flushed the toilet, but the smell is putrid enough to make his throat spasm violently.

Shmi is saying words again, and he shakes his head. Even that hurts too much. She visibly deflates, and tries to grab him upwards. While her efforts are admirable, Anakin is a six foot monster, kind of dead weight at the moment, and sweating harder than a cow at McDonald’s (however that would happen). It’s when Shmi attempts to grip him by his waist that Anakin realizes that, oh, right, he’s butt ass fucking _naked._

Diving head first into the bathtub is not his best call. Anakin may have given himself a concussion.

 

* * *

 

 

So he doesn’t give himself a concussion. It still gets him a brand new purple bruise right in the middle of his forehead. He draws his knees against his chest to make himself as small as possible while Shmi bathes him, eyes shut tight, as having them open doesn’t really help his headache. It’s getting clear that he’s sick. Not a little sick, either. Turns out you can’t go through two massive temperature shocks within a couple of days without facing physical consequences. Of course, it didn’t just happen to him, but Anakin bets his whole fucking car that Kenobi will sneeze maybe like, twice, and that’ll be the end of it for him.

Kenobi. Anakin’s brain is a masochist. He must’ve been doing an especially pronounced scowl, because Shmi draws the shower head away from his hair, and touches his forehead slightly.

“Oh, sweetheart, are you in pain?” He can hear her better now. Banging your head against a wall will do that to you, apparently.

“Yeah.” he says, simply. She waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. It’s a general kind of pain.

 

* * *

 

 

Anakin never had that first-world teenager perspective of being sick. Even before Shmi adopted him, he fucking  _loathed_  being sick. Loathed. He loathed feeling weak and loathed knowing how breakable and vulnerable he was. Being bound to a bed was about the worst fucking thing you could do to him. Anakin would rather melt into his chair in class, and wish death upon himself and others twenty times an hour than stay in the orphanage all alone and sick and pathetic. Don’t get him wrong, Anakin likes being alone just fine, but in his own terms, not some asshole bacteria's. 

Today, though, is different. Today Anakin feels his whole body soften into the mattress as Shmi helps him inside the bed, and snuggles the sheets around him. It’s the closest thing to not existing he’ll archive without, well, killing himself, and he’ll take it.

“I’m sorry.” he croaks out as Shmi pats his leg.

“It’s not your fault, baby. But don’t think for a _second_ you’re not carrying your butt to school as soon as that fever drops. You’re still grounded.”

How very unexpected. “Yes, ma’am.”

Shmi smiles one of her sad smiles. Then she gets up from the bed. “I called your doctor. He’s agreed to see you here at four.”

Anakin un—deflates so fast, he’s like a balloon that’s been let loose into a fucking fire. He tries to sit up, which proves to be impossible, unless he wants to spit out the tea and crackers Shmi had force fed him after the bath. “Wait—wait, that’s— I’m pretty sure that’s unprofessional, and illegal, and—not to mention malpractice—”

“What happened with Obi-Wan was very serious, Ani.” His mother says as she lowers the window shutters. The mention of the name chokes the words in Anakin’s throat.  “And you haven’t been well. You know that better than I do. I’ve given you enough medicine to cure a dying horse. If you don’t feel up to it by half past three or so, give the doctor a call and cancel it, but—” she stops, looking back down at Anakin, her sad smile gone, “but, try, alright? If not for yourself, for me, do it for me.”

Oh, god damn it. That’s a low fucking blow.

Anakin crosses his arms, glaring at the ceiling. He doesn’t move when she kisses him goodbye, or says anything else. Not like he’d have to, they both know he’ll see the shrink now. Let that man inside his home. Let him see Anakin unhealthy, possibly high as kite. Although, this time it’s from medicine.

(Because once Anakin walked into the man’s office with eyes so red and a grin so large, the shrink had taken a single look at him and sent him home. Shmi never found out. Anakin has always believed in actions speaking much louder than words.)

 

* * *

 

 

He manages to stay in bed until two pm. When his stomach, throat and head aren’t making sure he’s being properly punished for his last acquaintances with cold water and too high artificial warmth, he dreams. Dreams a lot. The first dreams are unintelligible strings of images and faces. The last one isn’t.

 

* * *

 

**(6 years before)**

 

* * *

“I’m fucking dying.” Anakin said, perhaps with more rasp than his throat truly had. Obi-Wan lifted an eyebrow, still not looking up from his book. Obi-Wan was reading Calvin and Hobbes, which was according to him was the best thing coming off the US of A. Anakin had pouted until Obi-Wan added,  _besides you, idiot._

“You're not dying” Kenobi says simply.

“I could be, you don’t know.”

Obi-Wan turned a page. “Yes, I do know. You can drop the Bonnie Tyler act, too.”

“Bonnie—” Anakin flapped his arms against the covers in astonishment. “What kind of teenager knows who Bonnie Tyler is?”

“Me. And you.”

“Yeah, but I only know because you won't fucking stop singing that eclipse song in the shower.”

Obi-Wan ignored him. The silence stretched. Anakin nudged Obi-Wan’s hip with his socked foot. Still nothing. He tried a risky, but definitive approach. The same foot dug under his best friend’s knee. Anakin wiggled his fingers. As expected, Obi-Wan burst out giggling, nearly falling off the bunk bed to get away from Anakin’s tickling. “You—fucking— _twat_ , I could’ve fallen!”

Anakin laughed at the term (british lingo never ceased to amuse him) but his throat complained, and he started coughing. He coughed so hard there were tears in his eyes by the time he got his shit in check.

“Hey, hey.” Obi-Wan murmured, sounding much closer than he did before. He’d sat right by Anakin’s side, back leaning against the wall.

“I—I told you, man” Anakin breathed out in between sharp intakes of air “ _Dying_ ”

“You can’t die from a cold, we’re not in the Stone Age anymore.”

Fingers swept through his hair, softly. Anakin closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling. Sometimes he wondered if Obi-Wan behaved like this because he knew Anakin hadn’t had anyone do this kind of stuff to him until he came along. Shipped off England directly into Anakin's life, to pet his head like a fucking dog.

“Try to sleep, Ani.”

“What if—I don’t want to die in my sleep.” Anakin whispered. He thought he’d masked the genuine fear pretty well, but he could hear the panic edge to his own voice.

“I won’t let that happen, mate.” That was a statement if Anakin had ever heard one. “Ahsoka needs two masters, right?”

“Yeah. That’s true, she does.”

Suddenly, there was shuffling. The bunk bed creaked dangerously until Obi-Wan’s thigh, his jeans, came in contact with Anakin’s cheek. Anakin sighed, and buried his nose in the material, turning slightly on his side. His arm grabbed onto Obi-Wan’s leg like it was a teddy bear. Ahsoka did the same with Anakin sometimes. He always let her hold him, no matter how suffocating it was, he never pushed her away. Obi-Wan had never pushed him away, either.

“Do you want me to sing to you? Bonnie Tyler?”

Anakin snorted, smirking against thick fabric. “I just said I didn’t want to die, though.”

He was immediately socked in the shoulder.

 

* * *

 

 

**(present)**

 

* * *

 

Anakin startles from sleep in the exact moment his eleven year old self is hit. His brain must be some sort of fucking wizard-harry-potter-kind of brain, because he feels actual pain in the exact same spot. He rubs at it, wondering why his subconscious desperately wants to ruin his life when he already does so when he’s awake and conscious.

“Oh, good, you’re up.” He hears directly above him.

“P—Padmé?”

Sure enough, that is Padmé, standing by his bed, gorgeous in her hoody and leggings, an outfit Anakin recognizes as her usual jogging equipment. She sounds a little out of breath. And looks really fucking angry, or maybe she’s just frowning, Anakin can’t tell with the faint light that comes through the open door.

“You hit me!” He shrieks, rubbing at his shoulder more vigorously. Padmé uncurls her fist, crossing her arms against her chest.

“Suck it up, Ani. Why did you turn your phone off?”

“Why are you in my house?”

Her eyes bulge at that, and Anakin rephrases that shit real quick before he gets punched again. “I mean—how did you get in?”

She doesn’t relax the way he thought she would. “I went by the laundromat first. You know, to ask your mom what the _hell_ had happened to you!” Anakin opens his mouth to complain about boundaries, but she holds up a finger, daring him to interrupt. Padmé is not the type of person to swear very often. Anakin doesn’t understand why she could be upset. He doesn’t get it, never has, never will. But she’s always adapted to his, admittedly many, quirks, he can tolerate her mother hen tendencies. Or pretend to. “She gave me the keys so I could come here and physically fight you. I’ll ask again: why did you turn off your phone? Never mind not answering my calls or texts last night, I come into school this morning to learn that a pipe blew up in the section you were supposed to clean yesterday, and that you’re absent, no one can tell me why—obviously—and Obi-Wan apparently told Mace Windu to, quote, _fuck off_ , in second period—”

Wait, what the fuck?

“He—said what?”

Padmé nods. “Indeed. In the middle of class. To a teacher. So, as the crazy smothering person that I am, I try to call you: surprise, surprise! Anakin has turned off his phone. Now, explain to me why. I’m done waiting. You’ve had your eventually, Ani. This is growing out of proportion, and it has something to do with what happened last Friday, I _know_ it does. So don’t treat me the way you treat your mother and feed me some—some bullshit excuse. I want the truth. Shmi told me your doctor was coming at four. Well, think of it as practice”

Anakin blinks. She’s breathing heavily, but still looks cool somehow. She’s so hot when she gets like this. Anakin would sneak into her student council meetings just to see her be all bossy and in charge, and he’d keep that image in mind later, as he kissed her into complete surrender.

“Can we fuck it out?”

Padmé rolls her eyes, sitting next to him. It’s a good thing that she knows he’s joking. It took some months to reach this point. The first time he attempted this move he got slapped so hard it left a mark for days.

“There’s no out, here.” She says, voice lower, less ragged than before. “Look, you don’t owe me anything, Ani. But, I know it’ll help you understand some things as well, not just me. Please. Talk to me.”

 

* * *

 

 

Anakin does. _Fuck it_. To her credit, Padmé only gapes the educated amount. When he’s done, literally done, on the brink of a full blown tantrum, biting the inside of his cheeks until they draw blood, she cuddles him close to her sweaty hoody, whispering soft things into his hair. She shows him a new Tumblr on her phone, _Palpatine looking at things_ , which apparently has their sweet principal paying the informatics club to take it the fuck down. It’s the best website on the internet. Padmé never says the obvious words, the clear diagnosis, the common variable to all these emotional equations he puts in front of her. She just holds him, like he deserves it.

Anakin gets why part of Shmi’s punishment was forbidding Padmé to come over and hang out. Before she leaves for her three o’ clock piano class, she tells him to turn on his cellphone.

“You’re the bravest person I know” she states, easy as that. “I’ve never seen someone face the big challenges so readily and shy away from the most insignificant ones.”

“This is a big one, though.” Anakin mutters. Padmé smiles, kisses his forehead again.

“To be honest, babe, I don’t think it’s even a challenge.”

 

* * *

 

Five minutes later the doorbell rings. Since Padmé had left Shmi’s keys behind her, Anakin doesn’t even think to assume anything else other than she’d probably forgotten something. The building’s door has been broken for years, if not fucking _decades_ , and all you’ve got to do is push a little for the door to give in. Anakin always makes the mistake of going for the intercom when the doorbell rings, even though they only use the thing for pizza deliveries.

He walks to the door holding a blanket around himself with one hand and the pink Motorola with the other, looking down at it, trying to see it as the small harmless pink device it is, and not a _Big Deal_. Or maybe he should do the opposite, according to Padmé’s (usually unfaultable) logic. He taps in the pin code, doing that bullshit breathing exercise as deeply as his fucked up lungs allow him (today it’s gonna be the day he tells the shrink that shit does not fucking work).

The first attempted communications that come through are Padmé’s. He cringes at the number on the message and call icons, and then at her capslock texting. Other than swearing, capslock also signals that the situation has escalated from mildly unnerving into really fucking upsetting.  

Anakin turns the doorknob just as he reads the very last message in his inbox. It’s not Padmé’s. The hour marks two fifty pm, today.

_I’m coming over. I’ll stay outside until Shmi comes home if I have to._

“Oh, that was easier than I thought.”

Anakin’s phone slips off his hands. Kenobi picks it up from the floor. “You look like shit, Anakin.” A pause. Then, "Alright, so, can I kiss you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah. i'm awful. i'm... really awful. i made you wait weeks for that. because i'm awful. (and kind of sad, tbh).  
> i do love u guys, though. and i've got the next one half written, so there's that. tysm for all the love in the last chapter. the title is from love hope and misery by jake bugg.  
> playlist for this mess, including jake bugg's lovely song: http://8tracks.com/4k144p/r-e-t-r-o-g-r-a-d-e


	6. Green like american money

Anakin once had to do a paper on thunder and lightning. Easy shit, basic secondary education crap, something Anakin had wiped off his ass in the school’s library, five minutes before it was due. Still, he remembers most of it. He remembers what lightning’s made of, and what it does to the human body.

This is what happens when you’re struck by lightning: you either die, or you live. So not unlike everything else. Except that living isn’t the best option sometimes. Sometimes the bolt reaches temperatures higher than the surface of the fucking sun, and it literally burns the subject alive. There’s a lot of different ways lightning can affect the human body, ranging from direct strikes to side flashes and ground currents. Of course the first one is the most uncommon. Having the deity upstairs go _fuck this particular person_ and discharge a vertical explosion of 300 kilovolts into someone, well, it takes a singular case of bad luck.

Anakin has never been struck by lightning. Everyone’s fucking surprised. Not that he hasn’t made himself available for it. He likes being outside during storms. He feels at peace with himself, in the middle of chaos.

But maybe—maybe—the reason why God has sparred him of being hit by a lightning bolt is because, instead, Anakin was given a _person._ A person who’ll shock him the same way. Rather than toying with the positive and negative electrostatic charge in clouds, this person will barge into Anakin’s life when he’s most vulnerable and gut his fucking heart into shreds.

Just like lightning, he can do nothing but let it happen, sit back, watch the show, and wonder what the fuck God had in mind as He created something so fucking beautiful, and yet so utterly terrifying.

 

* * *

 

 

**(1 year ago)**

 

* * *

 

 

Anakin had to be dragged away from the body. There was a pair of arms wrapped around his chest, pulling him backwards. He kicked and squirmed, growling like the fucking dog he was, still bubbling with the desire to feel shit crack beneath his fingertips. At some point he landed one good hit on his captor’s ribs with his elbow, but the person didn’t even fucking bulge. Anakin’s right arm was abruptly twisted behind his back, to a point where Anakin knew a little further tension would definitely do serious damage.

“Try that again, Padawan, and I’ll break your arm.”

His movements stilled immediately. “Let me go, Obi-Wan.” Anakin murmured, tasting blood on his tongue that wasn’t his.

“No.”

Obi-Wan released his arm, but didn’t stop walking backwards. The haze of rage that had settled over Anakin’s mind lifted somewhat. He looked down at his wobbly knees, moving mechanically, at the huge gash in his thigh, which suddenly started hurting like a bitch, as if it hadn’t existed a second ago.

Anakin saw the trail of red in the road he was living behind, dragged by his dirty sneakers. He saw Otto’s body crushed in the ground, a couple of feet ahead of him, growing smaller, head turned away. A small crowd of faceless people had gathered around the scene. Anakin couldn’t make them out or even apart, they were just a big mass of wide eyes, gaping mouths. They were just looking. No one was doing a damn thing. _Good_.

Otto’s goons were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they knew. Maybe they knew what their boss had done. Maybe they knew he’d deserved this and more.

“Oi, listen to me.” Obi-Wan said, louder this time. Otto and the crowd were blurring together in the night-lamps’ fading light. “Anakin.”

“Yeah. _Yeah_.”

“I’m gonna need you to trust me, alright?”

“I always trust you.” Anakin murmured. They stopped moving, and Anakin felt a sharp intake of air just behind his neck.

“Good. Okay.”

Anakin was slowly lowered to the ground, Obi-Wan’s arms not leaving him until his ass hit the pavement, balanced precariously in a sitting position. Anakin wasn’t drunk, or high, he was fully aware of his surroundings, of what had just happened, of what it could mean, to him or Shmi, or Obi-Wan, probably. Otto wasn’t some dealer Anakin owed drug money. Otto was Jabba’s first henchman. And Anakin had just beat Jabba’s first henchman to a pulp.

He closed his eyes against the soft night breeze. He would kill them. He knew that then. He was fully capable of it. He would’ve had killed Otto too, probably. Not even five minutes before, he’d had his fingers around the man’s larynx, with the intent of breaking it. What if he still had? What if Obi-Wan had pulled him off Otto a second too late? Anakin’s hands began shaking so violently he had to trap them under his knees, squeezing his calves against his thighs.

“Anakin?”

He felt a sudden weight just between his shoulder blades. Anakin’s eyes did not open. The weight dragged across his back until Anakin was completely enveloped by it.

“I got the car. We need to go to the hospital, Ani.” Obi-Wan said.

The car? The car had been parked on the opposite end of where Anakin was. If Obi-Wan had walked—no, ran, he’d probably ran—all the way there, he’d been gone for at least, what, twenty minutes? Shit, it’d seemed like no time had passed at all. Anakin was dissociating. He’d just sat there, bobbing slightly, bleeding all over the fucking pavement, for twenty minutes.

Anakin sniffled, felt water slide down his face. Oh, Jesus, when the _fuck_ had it started raining?

“ _Ani_ ” Obi-Wan whispered by Anakin’s ear, light scruff tickling Anakin’s cheek.

“He hit my mom. He fucking—he _slapped_ her.” His eyes shot open. “Like she was one of his sluts. Because of a fucking wrinkle. She missed a wrinkle on his fucking pimp suit and he decided that was worth laying his—his dirty fucking fingers on _my mother._ ”

Anakin’s hands were shaking again, but he’d taken them off under his legs. Obi-Wan had attempted to move away from him, but Anakin fisted his dripping sweater and pulled him closer.

Anakin suddenly, _desperately,_ needed Obi-Wan to understand why he’d done it.

“Hey—”

“He had to fucking pay, right? He deserved it. Right? Please—I—he hurt Shmi.”

Rain trickled down the hard lines on Obi-Wan’s forehead, clung onto his eyelashes. His eyes were huge, dark under the lamp’s artificial orange. He looked scared shitless. Scared of Anakin. Right. Because Anakin was a person apparently capable of fucking murder. But Obi-Wan had stayed with him for so long, after so much _crap_ , surely this wouldn’t draw the line. Surely. Fuck, _please_.

“Breathe, Ani—”

“Please, _please_ , you have to understand!” Anakin screamed. He let go of the sweater to grab Obi-Wan by the back of his neck, thumbs firmly sticking into the skin beneath his jaw. “Please, don’t go, I’m not—he deserved it, I promise. Right? You can’t leave me!”

“I’m not going—”

“You can’t! You’re not fucking allowed! He hit my mom. If he’d hit you, I’d do the same. I’d kill for you—you know that, right?” Obi-Wan wasn’t trying to push him off anymore. Their precarious sitting balance had tipped on Obi-Wan’s side and he’d fallen backwards on the hard pavement, Anakin still attached on top of him. The gash on his thigh ripped apart further. Not that it mattered. It didn’t matter at all. Anakin couldn’t feel anything but panic. “I’d fucking kill for you. That doesn’t mean you can leave. You don’t get to—! I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad. I’ll do anything. I’ll—I love you, Obi-Wan. I do. I think I just fucking killed someone, but I love you. That’s enough, right? That counts for something!”

Obi-Wan blinked. The crease between his eyebrows became more pronounced. His mouth parted slightly, as if he wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say. His lips were purple from the cold. Anakin’s stomach twisted itself into a knot, and then a tighter one. And then a tighter one.

And suddenly, it was so fucking clear to him, what he could do to make Obi-Wan stay. The one thing he’d been tiptoeing around since he was fucking fourteen years old. It’s not like he had anything else to lose.

(Actually, he had. A lot. At the time, though, Anakin thought he’d hit rock bottom. And rock bottom would come again, a year later, in his high school laboratory.)

Anakin’s resolve must’ve been obvious, because realization seemed to dawn on Obi-Wan’s face. “No, Ani, wait—”

Anakin kissed him. He leaned down as Obi-Wan bolted up, and they met in the middle, somehow, Anakin’s lips pressing forcefully between the ‘o’ shape of Obi-Wan’s. Rain had made their faces slippery, their mouths pliable, moldable to each other. Obi-Wan took a sharp intake of air through his nose. His hands on Anakin’s stomach went lax, simply holding him rather than pushing him away. Anakin sunk further down the middle of Obi-Wan’s thighs. Someone made a sound. Probably him.

The rain kept falling softly around them, trickling the different surfaces of the several cars, windows, buildings around them, enhancing their ragged breathing, which echoed in the night’s darkness. The street was desert. Otto was blocks away, his maybe-dead body maybe-soaking on the pavement. Otto had disappeared. Shmi’s black eye had disappeared. The pain in his own body, the cut on his thigh had fled Anakin’s mind. White noise had given into vacuum silence. Like the eye of a storm.

Anakin sucked Obi-Wan’s lower lip softly between his teeth. Warm hands clawed into Anakin’s hips and abruptly pushed him forward. Obi-Wan opened his mouth, Anakin tilted his chin, leaning down harder, until his tongue could touch his best friend’s, and that was the implosion of all matter before the explosion of all matter, the fucking Big Bang, under the rain, on the pavement, in complete silence.

(He’d feel this, again, a year later. Funny, how paradoxical the human nature is.)

It was _brutal_. There was nothing sweet about it. Or languid, or slow, or even hesitant. Anakin’s mouth slid against Obi-Wan’s in pure fucking frenzy. They’d discovered the fucking Holy Grail and were quenching their fucking thirst of—of each other. For how many years? Anakin wanted to think about it but he couldn’t. He couldn’t think about anything.

His jaw was starting to ache. Obi-Wan’s scruff scratched his lips and cheeks, and it burn, it burn the way lungs burn after you run for a while: painfully, making your heart squeeze into a ball within your ribcage. Still, _shit_ , you keep going, because you don’t want to fucking _stop_.

Anakin had never felt so much of his best friend. Not even his most vivid dreams had made justice to what was happening then. He couldn’t have imagined the possessive way Obi-Wan’s hands had latched onto Anakin’s soaked hair. Or how, when Anakin grinded on his lap, seeking more, Obi-Wan had paused their tongue-fucking to call him _lovely_.

“You’re so lovely.”

“’m not.” Anakin muttered against his lips.

“So lovely.” Obi-Wan repeated. He pressed their foreheads together, finally letting go of Anakin’s hair to caress his face instead.

His freckles were standing out like constellations in the night’s sky. It didn’t matter that tonight’s sky was blocked by clouds. Anakin had the stars on Obi-Wan’s face. Anakin might be lovely, but Obi-Wan was wonderful. Anakin didn’t even think to tell him that. Instead, he said, “So you’ll stay?”

If the beginning was the Big Bang, then what followed was a black hole. A Supermassive Black Hole. Obi-Wan drew his head back. He stared at Anakin for a couple of seconds, thinking. Then he opened his mouth.

Obi-Wan said something then, something profound, and important, that Anakin didn’t understand, and never would. Anakin’s ears had been filled with buzzing, his vision had blurred into complete black, and Anakin had passed out from blood loss before he could even comprehend how it all had gone to shit in zero point five seconds.

(He did, however, memorize the way Obi-Wan had looked. Eyes harder than steel, nostrils flaring. Again: a year later, this expression would appear on his mind like a taken picture)

Anakin had come back to his senses in a hospital bed. Alone. Well, Shmi had burst through the door yelling five minutes later, followed by a clusterfuck of intimidated hospital staff, sure-- but Anakin had woken up alone.

He’d been left alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .............. honestly. im sorry. im so sorry. my mental health has been complete crap this past month. i hope this was somewhat rewarding?? i wasnt planning to do the Big Reveal this way but oh well. fuck it, right. i did characterize anakin with someone in mind (sigh)  
>  i love ALL of you. your comments and kudos made me come back to this.  
> <33  
> (title from american money by borns)


	7. We kill our way to heaven

**(present)**

 

* * *

 

 

“Alright, so, can I kiss you?”

The blanket pools around Anakin’s ankles, dropped and forgotten. He’s standing there, holding the door open, in nothing but a pair of old shitty grey sweatpants, sweating like a motherfucker, so much that his hair is beginning to stick to his forehead, but for a moment, it’s as if something wraps around him tightly, keeping all of this unnoticed.

“W—what?” Anakin barely rasps out. He coughs and tries again, _“What?”_

“I asked if I could kiss you, right now.” Kenobi repeats, picture perfect of everything controlled. He’s levelled and serene. Everything Anakin isn’t.

“You…” Anakin’s voice is like gravel in his mouth. The _thing_ around him gets impossibly tighter. It’s not a bubble, like in the car, yesterday, what seems like a fucking lifetime ago. It’s not light, or nice. It doesn’t feel remotely like an escape, it feels like a _prison_. It’s as if someone pushed Anakin into a frozen lake, and he knows he won’t reach the surface quick enough, before it hardens again and traps him inside to drown.

Fuck, he can’t think. He can’t begin a single thread of rational reasoning before his brain shuts down on its own and reboots like a malfunctioning computer. His headache grows as he watches Kenobi’s impassive expression bore holes into him. 

“Yes, me. Can I kiss you?”

For the first time since Anakin’s opened the door, Kenobi looks away from him. And laughs. Shit, no, Kenobi chuckles, actually chuckles. Although, while his mouth quirks in something that resembles a smile, his eyes stay completely flat. “I reckon it’s not that hard of a question. Yes or no. That’s it. Very straightforward, just as you like it, yeah? No possibility of mistaking anything.” His voice changes, and it has an edge to it that unsettles Anakin. “So just—just—can I kiss you? Or not? You have… you have to tell me, Anakin, you have to give me a straight answer on this one thing, for good, because I—I don’t know what to do anymore, I—I don’t bloody—”

Kenobi stops himself midsentence, blinking at some spot on the floor that’s more interesting than Anakin’s face. It suddenly hits Anakin why his voice sounded so fucking foreign. Why he couldn’t place the emotion behind it at all. It’s because he’s never heard Kenobi try to sound like he’s not scared when he’s actually fucking terrified, and _fail_.

For some reason, it snaps Anakin out of his own trance. The more he watches Kenobi under this new light, the clearer Anakin’s thoughts become.

All at once, Anakin sees the crinkles in Kenobi’s sweater, its washed, sick-looking yellow tone making him look paler in comparison. Anakin sees dirt smeared on the front of Kenobi’s Doc Martens. He sees an actual fucking _stain_ in the right pocket of his jeans.

And his face.

Kenobi’s jaw is smeared with tiny cuts, the skin colored an angry red as it dips into his neck, as if he shaved too hard this morning. There’s bags under his eyes that contour the natural crinkles of his expression and make him look older. The freckles across his nose are almost too vivid, like someone took a pen and dotted them darker. His hair is long enough to curl around his ears. His eyebrows are fuller than usual.

Anakin sees all of these things. And he can’t fucking un-see them. He tries to go back to the picture of the stone-cold Kenobi he opened the door to, but that person never existed. And it’s all _bullshit_ , because now that Anakin’s aware that Kenobi’s hurting, his useless, dipshit soft heart decides that Kenobi’s pain is Anakin’s as well.

“What does this mean?” Anakin asks, after a silence so heavy it was physically pushing his shoulders down. He’d been staring at Kenobi’s knuckles turn white around the pink Motorola in his hand.

Kenobi clicks his tongue, still inspecting the wood boards of the living room like they hold the answers to all the great moral dilemmas of our time. “This means exactly what you think it means.”

The fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi, deadpan extraordinaire, is actively avoiding Anakin’s eyes is starting to really fucking piss him off. What is he, not worthy of it?

“That’s funny, because I’ve got no fucking clue about what I think this means, Kenobi” Anakin spits. 

Kenobi’s eyes to snap back up to his. And you know that stupid saying, be careful what you wish for? Yeah, it lights up in Anakin’s mind like a damned Christmas tree. Kenobi’s expression is so fucking raw, so unaware of its own intensity. An open book for Anakin to read against his will. Kenobi might as well be called Obi-Wan Skywalker.

(The thought pops uninvited into Anakin’s brain and he wants to punch himself in the face. Hard. )

“You’re still calling me that.” Kenobi mutters, voice low, betrayal apparent in every word “ _Ke-no-bi._ Why? That’s not my first name.”

“I—uh… what?”

“I don’t know why you’d call me that on purpose. To hurt me?”

Anakin’s speechless. This is way above his pay grade. He’s sick, tired, and sporting a 102.2F fever. His headache has somehow developed into a full blown migraine in the last couple of minutes, even though Shmi gave him enough antibiotics to kill a horse. Or cure a horse. She said something about a horse. Anakin isn’t bigger than a horse, damn it.

But of course, he couldn’t possibly expect to battle illness without having to battle everything else that’s fucked up in his life at the same time. Of course. You know what, bring Padmé over! He missed having mental breakdowns on her lap. And Kenobi, minutes after, have him demand Anakin to choose whether he wants to fuck himself with a chainsaw or a cactus. And then later, his shrink, too. Oh, oh, and cherry on top? Anakin has to be in pain and shirtless the whole time. Brilliant.

If God put as much effort into improving the planet as he puts into making sure Anakin’s karma has his ass on check, we’d have heaven on earth a _long_ time ago.  

Anakin squeezes his eyes shut. He lets go of the door to rub a hand against his forehead. His hair is glued to his skin from how much he’s sweating. “Well, I don’t know why you’d come here today and pull this crap with me, but here you fucking are, right? Why do people do anything? Mysterious ways and all that jazz.”

“Don’t joke, Anakin” Kenobi says “I asked you a question.”

“But you can’t just—” it’s Anakin’s turn to laugh. An ugly feeling forms in the pits of his stomach and claws its way to the very tips of his fingers. His chest feels so heavy. Like someone put their hands inside of it to push his lungs and heart down, left and right. It’s not fair. It _hurts_. “You can’t just expect me to—you’re such a prick!”

Anakin’s dragging both of his hands across his face now, desperately trying to ease the tidal of nausea that decided to collectively fuck him up. But more overwhelming is the panic. He knows himself. He knows what this tightness means. Soon he’ll be bending over himself and swallowing down screams, not groans.

And the worst thing is, Kenobi will be here.

“Oi, look at me.”

“Can’t you see I’m in pain? Leave, damn it, and close the door behind you.” Anakin says, his voice coming off half-muffled by his hands. Who gives a shit, he won’t repeat himself. Not even five seconds later, he hears the door’s latch click closed. Wait. By his moon and stars, did the asshole actually leave? It’s so unexpected that Anakin opens his eyes, lowering his hands enough to see clearly.

“I don’t think so. Not this time.”

Fucking fuck of a damn _fuck_.

Kenobi has the sole of his foot planted against the door. His arms are crossed over himself as he looks back at Anakin with what honest to God seems like _contempt_.

There he fucking is. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is the self-righteous asshole, the preaching prick, the Better Man. The unmovable, unreachable wall. Anakin can literally feel his own insides tearing each other apart, and yet look at him. Even while looking like fucking death, he’s still less of a mess than Anakin is.

“You know,” Kenobi starts. Anakin already wants kick him in the balls seven times. “Every time we’re together these past few days, something stupid happens, and then we make our separate ways as if that’s all there is to it. Every bloody time, we either fight, or we cry, or we hug. We’ve done every possible thing but talk.”

We haven’t done everything, Anakin thinks before he can help himself.

“We haven’t done everything” Anakin says before he can help himself.

Both he and Kenobi have identical expressions of shock after he clams his mouth shut. Except Anakin’s is a lot more nauseated and Kenobi’s is a lot redder. It doesn’t even taste like victory to have cracked through his bullshit persona so early. Kenobi’s blushing quickly becomes more of an angry thing than an embarrassment thing, and Anakin’s stomach just keeps doing backflips regardless.

Kenobi groans. He pushes himself away from the door, shortening their distance considerably. They’re close enough that Anakin’s nose becomes immediately attuned with the familiar smell of Old Spice perfume. Anakin really wants to ask Kenobi if he bathes in every perfume he has or if it’s just this one.

“Get away from me.” Anakin says, mostly out of panic. He’s lowered his hands from his face, and they hang awkwardly at his sides. A drop of sweat travels from the nape of his neck to the small of his back. It’s hard not to be self-conscious when you’re shirtless and humid the way Anakin is. Even as he’s watching Kenobi glare up at him, even if he has to noticeably tilt his chin down in order to glare back, Anakin still feels smaller. It’s a feeling Kenobi has perfected drawing out of him, for years.

“Right. Me, away from you. That’s what you want. You want me to stay away until you get lonely enough to need me again. But just for a few seconds. I hold you in my arms, you say you hate me, while looking at me like you love me, and then you’ll sod off and piss on my existence.”

The entire time Kenobi talks Anakin feels like he’s being slapped over and over again. It takes him a moment to speak. His heart has leapt up his throat, and breathing’s become difficult. “Oh, fuck you!”

Kenobi doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, that’s another thing. You want that, too. Don’t you? You…” he bites his lips, eyes narrowed, “You want to sleep with me.”

The silence that follows wraps tight around them. The living room’s atmosphere becomes thicker than a greenhouse’s.

Shit. What does Anakin answer to that? Does he deny it? He could say he was hallucinating from the fever when he sent that text. It’s not that far off the truth. He could tell Kenobi it happened in a dream, and dreams don’t fucking count. It’s not like he can control his mind during sleep. But these are all stupid arguments. No matter what Anakin says, it’ll be weighed down by what happened a year ago, under the rain.

Anakin draws his hands into fists, and arches his back like a bull. He notices how Kenobi’s eyes follow the movement of his shoulders. The ugly thing in the bottom of his tummy morphs into a different kind of pressure, no less uncomfortable, a lot more fucking dangerous. Anakin’s chest burns, and he knows only half of that is the fever’s fault.

Driven into a corner, feeling trapped and with the Old Spice bittersweet smell pushing bile further up his throat, Anakin has the impulsive urge to say what is, admittedly, the stupidest fucking thing he could say at this point: “I’m not the one who barged in here asking if he could kiss me!”

Kenobi’s furrows his eyebrows. “That’s—” he begin, but whatever bullshit he meant to say seems to get stuck. He swallows down his words.

Anakin, on the other hand, pours them out of himself like his brain to mouth filter broke.

“Which, by the way, is fucking _rich_ coming from you, considering last time that happened you stopped talking to me.” Anakin laughs again. It sounds hysterical in his own ears. “Wait—wait, no, not ‘last time’, the only fucking time that happened. So, what’s different, uh? What changed in a year? Avoidance does it for you? Is that it?”

It’s only when Kenobi’s back hits the wall and his knees brush against Anakin’s that Anakin realizes they’d been moving towards it. He didn’t even notice walking. It’s like his self-awareness turned itself off.

“I tried talking to you at school and you told me to go fuck myself in front of the whole cafeteria.” Kenobi says. His breathing is short and shallow. He’s doing this thing where he chews on his lower lip every so often and it’s really scraping on Anakin’s nerves.

“Yeah, because nothing happened before that. Nothing whatsoever. You definitely didn’t leave me alone in a hospital to _rot_ , and then dropped off the face of the earth.”

Anakin feels so sticky. He’s not being touched at all and yet his skin is erupting with goosebumps. Fuck, why didn’t he just put on a fucking shirt? He knows he should be stepping back by now, he knows that, but hell if he can bring himself to actually do it.

“I didn’t leave you alone at the hospital, I stayed with you until Shmi got there—”

Again, Anakin’s body moves on its own. His right fist connects with the wall, millimeters away from Kenobi’s head, effectively silencing him. Pain explodes in Anakin’s knuckles, but he ignores it. “Shut up! It doesn’t matter! I woke up alone. You weren’t _there_. Do you know why I had to skip school for a week? Because I had to follow my mom around. Because I was scared _shitless_ Jabba had sent someone after her. To pay for what I’d done to Otto. And you didn’t give a shit, you—” he hits the wall again. “You left me alone!”

Kenobi swallows. “I know, I _know_ I shouldn’t have—”

“Then why did you—”

“I was scared too!” he screams suddenly. “I thought—!” he looks down at the space between them. Anakin watches Kenobi’s shoulders drop as he takes a deep breath. “After you kissed me that day—”

“Oh, don’t pretend you didn’t put your tongue down my throat.”

Kenobi huffs. He looks up at Anakin and his exasperated expression rings so many bells that Anakin has to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep a smile off his mouth. This is just. This is so fucking stupid.  

“Bloody hell, fine, after _we_ kissed that day,” Kenobi murmurs. He’s rubbing his thumbs over the pink Motorola absently. His eyes become unfocused, as if he’s going somewhere far away. Anakin finally relaxes his fist and leans his forearm against the wall. “You said something. You said, ‘so… you’ll stay, right?’ and you had this look on your face… you looked so young, Ani. I thought—I thought you’d kissed me because you knew how I felt about you, not because you wanted to do it. I mean, you’re manip—you know how people work, Anakin. And that was an extremely stressful situation, you probably freaked out and thought the only way to keep me from leaving was—well. Kissing me. Giving me what I wanted.”

Anakin doesn’t realize the breath he’s holding until his lungs start to ache. He can feel his heart pulse against his ribs. He’s digging up memories he’d buried deep within, memories laced with suffering, and loss, and he’s trying to distance himself emotionally in order to make sense of this shit properly. But he just _can’t_. Kenobi didn’t get it right, but he didn’t get it completely wrong, either.

Anakin doesn’t know what to feel.

“What did you say?” His voice is almost too apathetic to be his own.

“You weren’t listening?”

“I meant, that day. Just before I passed out, you said something. I couldn’t make it out.”

Obi-Wan looks at him, again, hurt apparent in his expression. “I—”

_Ladies and gentleman,_

_This is Mambo Number 5._

They both jump. Then they look down. The pink Motorola is vibrating in Kenobi’s hand as the synthesizer blasts out the last of the 90’s great anthems. The situation is so fucking surreal Anakin can’t help the startled laugh that bubbles out of him.

“Classic Anakin.” He hears Kenobi whisper. Anakin stops laughing when he sees the big, stupid grin on his face, the tiny crinkles on the corner of his eyes. Shit. Shit. _Shit_. The jump scare made Kenobi lean off the wall slightly, and Anakin’s nose is practically poking his forehead. Kenobi tilts his face up, Anakin looks down, and they’re right there again, on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump.

It helps that _Mambo Number 5_ gets really fucking annoying if you’re trying not to listen to it. Anakin clears his throat. “I should. Uh.”

“Right.”

Kenobi holds out the Motorola, and Anakin yanks it off his hand. His heart leaps at the not-quite lingering of their fingers. Jesus fucking Christ, Anakin’s has to be the most pathetic human being alive. At least he’s finally managed to step away from the damn wall.

He flips the phone open. “ _What?”_

“Who are you talking to?” Shmi asks on the other side of the line. “Because it can’t be your mother.”

“Oh, sorry. Head hurts.”

Shmi clicks her tongue, blissfully unaware of the situation developing in her hallway. This hits Anakin as a déjà vu of sorts. “Still? After everything I gave you? You sound better, though.”

He does? He doesn’t fucking feel better, that’s for sure. “I am.”

“So, does that mean you’ll see the doctor?”

Anakin’s eyes find Kenobi again, who’s fidgeting with his fingernails, still leaning against the wall, pointedly looking at everything but Anakin. _Because you knew how I felt about you._ That’s what he told Anakin. _Because you knew how I felt about you_. Giving me what I wanted.

“Hello? Ani?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will”

“Good. That makes me very happy, baby.”

Anakin feels the illogical urge to cry. “Okay.”

Shmi sighs. He hears the clicking of buttons and the familiar sounds of her laundromat. “Alright, well, I’m definitely not leaving before seven today. Have you eaten anything else? You need to drink water. How’s your fever?”

Anakin answers her questions robotically, with as much gentleness as he can muster. When he hangs up, he lets himself stare ahead as he closes the flip phone against his chin. For once, he didn’t lie to her. He will see the stupid shrink man. But for that to happen, Anakin needs to go punch a pillow for at least half an hour. He needs a shower, he needs to jerk off (urgently) and he needs a fucking nap. Alone. All of that, he needs to do alone.

“How’s Shmi?” Kenobi asks. Anakin forces his legs to go in the opposite direction of where his voice comes from.

“She’s fine.” He says, tone clipped. “Wait here.”

“What? Where are you going?”

Anakin doesn’t bother answering. He’s proud of himself for maintaining a calm pace as he walks down the corridor. His back muscles tense from the stare he can almost imagine licking at his skin. The sweatpants feel too low on his hips. _Fuck_. Maybe he’ll skip the pillow punching part.

The smell of his bedroom is pungent, and Anakin takes a moment to cringe at how depressing the division looks. With the shutters closed to the max and the curtains drawn, it’s a literal cave of darkness. There’s a large stain of sweat in his bed, and a smaller one on his pillow, though the latter is from crying.

That’s Anakin’s life. Sweating and crying, with some interludes of yelling. The fx-CG20 rests on his nightstand like a bible. Anakin throws the pink Motorola onto the bed and picks up the calculator. It’s strange. He’s finally returning the damn thing. Even though it’s only been in his house since Friday, somehow it feels like it’s been way longer than that. If he gives it back to Kenobi, he’ll have no other excuse to talk to him. They can go back to the weird ignorance waltz of before. Anakin will bury the past few days back where he’d buried what happened last year, and he’ll be fine. Not happy, no. But fine. He’s long learned to settle for fine.

Or, he thinks he has. Kenobi’s words keep replaying in his head. _Giving me what I wanted._

“Nice nest.”

Anakin snaps his neck around. The persistent throbbing from his headache peaks at the action, and his vision blurs for a moment. “I told you to—oh, shit”

“You okay?” Kenobi shows intention of walking closer, and Anakin holds up a hand in front of him, blinking furiously. How the fuck did he not hear a man’s combat boots step down the corridor? Maybe today is the day he finally tells his shrink about this dissociative crap. It’s becoming a problem.

“Don’t. I thought told you to stay.”

“Good thing I’m not a dog, then.” Kenobi is looking around quickly, as if wanting to see as much as he can of the wolf’s lair before the wolf shoos him away.

Anakin doesn’t fucking want Kenobi ogling his sad, sweaty bedroom. Or his sad, sweaty bed. _Especially_ his sad, sweaty bed. It unsettles him to think that he was cuddling there with Padmé like five seconds ago, spilling the beans on the same prick who’s now standing by the door looking at it. Anakin’s brain is also quick to fetch the last dreams he had on that bed. A childhood memory. And-

 _And_.

“Here.” He thrusts the Casio at Kenobi. Kenobi stares at it like it just insulted his late mother.

“You don’t need it anymore?”

“No. I don’t want your charity. Take it, c’mon.” Anakin rushes.

Kenobi eyes him strangely. His face is getting red again. Damn it, why won’t he just take the fucking Casio and fuck off?

“Do you remember what I asked you?”

“What?” Anakin’s confused at first, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. And Anakin was labelled one at age five. Not that’s doing him any favors now, since all does is gape at Kenobi and feel his face burn. “I’m not answering that.”

“Not now, or not ever?”

“Not—” Anakin’s got the ‘ _ever’_ ready to fire under his tongue. He’ll say it. He will. Fuck it. _He will_. He’ll end this shit. He’ll go back to normality, or what’s become normality anyway. He’ll ace his boring classes and clean bathrooms and even play fucking football. Watch him. He will.

Kenobi bites his lower lip. Anakin looks away. His entire body sags like a deflated balloon. “Now. Not now. Okay? Just fucking leave.”

The fx-G20 is taken carefully out of his hand. “Thanks, love.” Kenobi whispers “I’ll text you, yeah?”

Anakin doesn’t move until he hears the front door close again. Then he pulls his sweatpants down.

 

* * *

 

Maul looks at the bit of sausage he just scrapped off his canine with a finger nail. He makes sure Griev’s looking at him and puts it on his mouth.

“That’s disgusting.” Griev says.

Maul grins around his fingers. “Yeah? I’m sure I got a bit of bun back there, you wanna try?”

Griev answers by pushing Maul’s feet off the center table. A couple of empty cans of beer fall to the floor. “Quit being a faggot.”

“Whatever” Maul shrugs. “I’m not cleaning this shit, though.”

They watch the TV. The girl in spandex is getting rawed in all her holes. Her moans sound more painful than anything else. She’s got a gigantic cock down her throat, a plug up her ass, another fucker on missionary, and some platinum blonde bitch pulling her hair. She’s crying.

Maul looks at Griev. His face is the same as always, barely perturbed. You’d think they’re watching the fucking news, and not some taped shitty porn. “You get off to this shit?”

“Sometimes.”

Maul laughs. “I don’t think I could, man.” He reaches for his current beer and takes a sip. When he looks over the rim, Griev is staring at him. The TV’s light makes his eyes look yellow, his cheeks even more hollow.

“That’s what you said last time.” Griev comments.

“Shit, I did, didn’t I? And yet.”

Griev’s mouth shakes. Maul recognizes that for the smirk it is. Regardless, he crooks his smile for the both of them. The girl in the porn is now straight up sobbing. The other blonde whore, the alpha whore, spits on her face. “You are _scum_.” she says. The idiot’s actually trying to put on a performance with this character.

“Give that woman an Oscar.” Maul says.

Griev ignores him. “Did you confirm with Jabba about the hour?”

“Relax, Mustafar’s ours for the night. What am I, a fucking rookie?”

“Just checking. What about Skywalker?”

Maul leans back against the couch, grinning. “What about the son of a bitch?” He downs the rest of the beer in one big gulp.

“You think he’ll show up?”

In the porn, the two guys pull out their cocks abruptly and get off bed. Spandex girl looks excited for the first time since the whole thing started. You can tell it’s not a part anymore. The alpha whore kneels between her legs, her smile genuinely terrifying. Then starts giving spandex girl what looks like the best head anyone’s ever given someone.

“Yeah… he’ll show.” Maul breathes out, crushing the can between his fingers.  

“But what if he freaks out? He was with friends with Obi-Wan.”

Maul narrows his eyes, and absently mirrors the alpha whore’s evil grin. “So was I. Trust me, G, tomorrow I’m gonna beat that cocksucker to a pulp, and Anakin’s gonna hold him up for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a couple of things about this chapter/fic in general:  
> \- if ur wondering who tf griev and maul are and what tf is gonna happen tomorrow go back to chapter 2.  
> \- anakin and obi-wan's relationship isn't a model relationship. i feel like this needs to be addressed. there's a lot of codependency involved, a lot of miscommunication, lack of limits, etc. HOWEVER they were best friends first, which in this case, is very important. there's love and attraction, but there's also unshakable trust in each other.  
> \- you have probably noticed i bring up "god" a lot. anakin in particular bemoans constantly about an "entity" out of his control that apparently has it out for him. this is just a stupid allegory of the force in this au. i find them similar. i'm not religious myself, so i dont know if this could be offensive to someone, but in any case, just ignore this if you think so  
> \- i suffer from DPD (Depersonalization disorder), and i base some of anakin's reactions on my own behavior. just fyi  
> \- if ur outraged over the severe lack of baby ashoka happy happy fluffy orphanage flashbacks, i'll double the dose next chapter (that'll be out in three years, maybe). i'm sorry!! but i really needed obikin to TALK. lets hope i shone some light into what happened. i know posting irregularly breaks the natural flow of story, but believe me, this update is kind of a miracle in itself.  
> \- playlist for this monster: http://8tracks.com/4k144p/r-e-t-r-o-g-r-a-d-e (title from kill our way to heaven, by Michl)  
> \- I HAVE A TUMBLR!! http://www.itswowza.tumblr.com  
> \- i had another one, but i deleted it because someone told me to go kill myself in an ask and i just. didnt rly need that lol. but its back!!! i also post art and other shit. feel free to scream at me  
> \- to everyone who took the time to read this story, leave kudos or write a comment, thank you very, very much. it means a lot. it's hard for me to like my writing, but u guys make me go back to retrograde, again and again <3


	8. A picture is worth a thousand words but a thousand words are worth one defining picture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The fx-G20 is taken out of his hand. “Thanks, love” Kenobi whispers “I’ll text you”" (filler chapter)

_Ani look what I found :)_

_( 1 attached picture)_

_The napkin where you first drew R2D2 remember? :)_

**You fckn stole that!!! I searched all over for that shit**

_I did not! you gave it to me!_

**Dont remember any of that**

_Want it back?_

**Sure**

_Alright i'll give it to you tomorrow :)_

**Ok**

_How are you?_

**Im fine kenobi**

_Kenobi. Thought we were over that_

**Its just a name**

_What if I called you skywalker_

**Dont care**

_Anakin……_

**Wht??**

_Nothing. Don’t forget to call Snips tomorrow_

**Who tf do you take me for?? Ill visit**

_You are? When?_

**Idk.. after physics**

_Can I come with?_

**Don’t you have ap calc w mace windu**

_you’re well informed :)_

**fuck off**

**Wait that’s what you told him this morning!!!!**

_yeah i did :/_

**wtf even happened after that**

**no wait wtf happened before**

_i don’t know I just snapped_

_i was frustrated cause I couldn’t get you off_

_my mind_

_couldn’t get you off my mind_

_not much better is it_

_bloody hell_

_anakin_

**so what did he do**

_ordered me out of the room. I apologized!!_

**of course thats all he did**

_what do you mean?_

**1 does not simply tell mace windu to fck off and isnt screwed 5ever**

**Except if one is obi-wan kenobi obvs**

_:P obvs_

**Don’t :P me its fckn unfair dude**

_:P_

**BYE**

* * *

 

 

_Just got snips present!!!_

**What did u buy**

_(1 _ _attached picture)_

_:)_

**"#1 Padawan"**

**Wow**

_What 8 year old wont appreciate a personalized cuppa_

**#1?**

_Yes?_

**Ok**

_What did you get her?_

**None of your business**

_Hey now_

_Oi_

_Love, cmon_

**Stop calling me that shit**

_Are you seriously jealous of snips_

**What the fuck????**

**No I am not you egocentric prick**

**Not everything is about you**

**And thats fucking creepy**

_:)_

**Stop smiling**

_:D_

_But really ani, you know ive got enough room in my heart for 2 #1 Padawans_

**Idk wtf ur talking about and I dont care**

**Also that’s mathematically impossible**

_Math has never met you though_

**What does that even mean**

_Don’t play dumb, you’re everything but dumb_

_What did you get Ahsoka?_

**I was thinkin I could give her my red umbrella**

_The one we played star wars with? Your lightsaber?_

**Yeah that**

**Idk its lame**

_No it's sweet :) she’ll love that_

**I miss her a lot**

_Me too_

**Shes the top smiley face sticker earner of her class**

_I know! :)_

_In our time Miss Satine only gave sad stickers remember_

**You got a sad sticker like one time shut up**

_What? I got them all the time_

**Liar**

_Am not_

**I got a red frown once**

_what the hell did you do????_

**remember snowball**

_:O_

**Yup**

**Hey can I ask you something?**

_Of course, o liberator of bunnies_

**Fuck off he was sad on that cage**

_I knew that was you i knew it!!_

**Anyway. If I was a tree what kind of tree would I be**

_Hahaha what?_

**My shrink gave me fckn homework**

_Didn’t know you were seeing a doctor again_

**~~Its your fault~~** (message cancelled)

**Whatever ur helping or**

_Aren’t you supposed to answer that by yourself?_

**Just asking for ideas**

**Forget it**

_No no its alright :) lets see_

_You’re a hawthorne I reckon. Back in England there was a park full of them._

_Its got big thorns but if you’re careful you can get the red berries which are really delicious_

_I used to binge buckets in seconds :P_

**So thorns and red berries**

~~**Awesome man dont start sucking my dick just yet** ~~ **(message cancelled)**

**awesome man thanks**

_I remember in late spring theyd blossom little white flowers_

_Gorgeous tree. You couldnt not look at it_

**Mmm really**

_Yes_

_Children got hurt all the time because they grabbed the branches too hard_

**What about you**

_What about me?_

**U ever got hurt?**

_Sure I did :P_

**Ok**

_But Ive learned my away around the spikes_

**You’re such a fckn prick**

_Did that help?_

**Yes I’ll just read our convo to my shrink**

**Im sure he’ll find it rly fckng telling**

_I don’t mind_

**Not like I don’t tell him enough already** (sent) (deleting the message wont cancel the dispatch)

_Oh alright_

**I didn’t mean that I tell him shit about us**

**Not that there’s a us**

_Anakin its fine_

_I tell shit about us to my doctor_

**You’re seeing a doctor too?**

_Im a british orphan living in the usa_

_I need 3, love_

**Oh okay**

**Don’t call me that**

_What tree am I by the way? Just curious_

**You’re a fucking oak**

_Cheers_

_Unbelievable_

**Google it**

_What?_

**Oak tree meaning**

_I will_

_Oaks are quite thick_

**Go the fuck to sleep**

_Its seven pm_

**Knock urself out i don’t care**

 

* * *

 

 

_I heard you’re on our football team now_

_Go scorpions?_

**Dont. Fuck palpatine**

**Its your fault for punching me in the face**

_I know... im sorry ._

**whatever**

**hows ur back**

_doesnt hurt anymore :)_

**good. well palpatine was out to get me anyway**

_Hes obsessed with you_

**sooner or later hed find some shit to blackmail me with**

_oh you'll do well don’t worry_

_You’re built for it_

**Am I now**

_You are_

**How so**

**Dont answer that**

**Maul called me a horse**

**My mom compared me to a horse this morning**

**Do I look like a fcuking horse????**

_Maul? You’re talking to maul?_

**Considering hes the captain yeah??**

_Be careful with that guy_

**……??**

**Wtf happnd with you 2?**

_Nothing worth mentioning_

_Hes not a very good person…. A bit unstable_

**Yeah we’re similar**

_Shut up anakin you’re nothing like him_

**Woah okay**

**(1 ** **attached picture)**

**My mother duckfacing at me from the couch**

**Im suing**

_Shmi!!! Tell her shes gorgeous and hasn’t aged a day_

**Like hell. dont flirt**

_I don’t flirt with all skywalkers_

**All**

_Yeah_

**Just hawthorns**

_Just hawthorn_

**Jesus**

_What?_

**You’re such a prick**

_You keep telling me that in specific situations_

_Im sensing a pattern_

**Go sense yourself asshole**

_Wow_

_You're lovely_

_Anakin?_

_Oi_

_What line did I cross this time_

_At least tell me that_

_Was it the lovely_

_It was, wasn’t it_

_Well you are_

_I’ll see you tomorrow :)_

_If you ignore me I’m using the morning announcements to confess my eternal love for you_

_I know the radio club president_

_Alright then_

_Hope you enjoy bonnie tyler_

**obi-wan :)**

_yes love :D_

**ill fucking choke you to death :)**

_:(_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing this was therapy  
> im sorry if this seems stupid/pointless i just wanted to write softcore texting tree methapors before heading into the dramafuckingtic final chapters of this mess  
> playlist at http://8tracks.com/4k144p/r-e-t-r-o-g-r-a-d-e  
> as always, the support on the last chapter has been p incredible  
> love u


	9. And if I'm feeling like I'm evil, we've got nothing to gain

“You know, Anakin, we all have a concept of intelligent people.” The shrink said, putting the pad down on his lap. The man was too big and formal sitting in the armchair where Shmi usually sat on her pajama’s watching the  _telenovela_. The absurdity of the comparison almost made Anakin smile. Almost. “We tend to picture intelligent people with robot-like qualities. Cold, calculative, rational and logical above all else. We oppose all of that to emotion. If you were to ask a child to draw a very clever person, they’d never draw the person crying, or laughing.”

Anakin pulled on a thread of wool from the blanket wrapped around him. “But I thought the emotional quotient and the intelligent quotient were two different things.” He mumbled.

The shrink smiled slightly. “You’re right, they are, but not in the way you’d expect. Where I’m going with this is: this concept is wrong. Most of the time, the greater your intellect is, the more susceptible you are to your own emotions”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I think that you’re constantly trying to repress what you feel, whatever that may be. I think you’ve internalized this idea of… strength, worthiness, if you will, that is stoic and doesn’t cave to feelings. And you’re desperately trying to live according to it.”

The thread of wool snapped abruptly and Anakin looked away. He could feel his pulse thundering under the skin of his neck. “Okay, let’s say you’re right. What’s wrong with that? We can sit here and discuss strategies and better ways to deal with my shit, but in practice, I’d rather not feel”

“Except you do feel. Which,” the man quickly added “is a good thing! Anakin, there’s _nothing_ wrong with sentiment. Nothing. Logic might draw life, but it’s sentiment that colors it.”

Anakin couldn’t help but smirk a little. “Okay, John Keating.”

He heard the shrink chuckle. Silence fell between them. It was clear the man was waiting for him to say something other than a stupid movie reference. Anakin was fucking deflecting. He’d read enough on Clinical Psychology to know that the shrink knew. “But—sure, but how can you explain the fact that the only times I let myself, uh,  _feel_ , were literally the worst moments of my life? How can you explain that?” The smirk was still in place. He probably looked creepy but he didn’t care. His eyes were burning and if he stopped smiling he was ninety percent sure he’d eventually begin to cry.

“Look, Anakin—”

“No. You look. Let’s say I let sentiment color my life right now. I’d kick you out of my house. I’d lock myself up and I’d never fucking see the light of day ever again. Because that’s what I feel like doing”

“It’s okay to cry.”

God damn it, Anakin wasn’t Will Hunting and he didn’t need this coddling bullshit. “I don’t want to fucking cry!” he yelled.

The armchair huffed as the shrink got up. Anakin felt a spike of panic as he thought the man would actually leave, but when he looked up he saw his doctor sit right next to him. Anakin searched his stare, but he didn’t find pity in it. The man’s expression wasn’t like Shmi’s, or Padmé’s, fearful and worried. Or Kenobi's, disappointed, always wishing he’d be better. And maybe all shrinks practiced in the mirror to make themselves look like this, but the man looked… kind.

He wasn’t touching Anakin. He sat a good two palms away, body completely turned to face him. The notepad had been left forgotten in Shmi’s armchair. When the shrink spoke again, his voice was soft enough that it immediately made Anakin cry.

Fuck, and people call him complicated. You talk to him with something other than contempt in your voice, and Anakin just straight up fucking melts.

“When I say you’re allowed to feel, I don’t mean indulge into every compulsion that strikes you, and you know that. Nothing is black and white, including you. You’re a human being. You’re allowed to feel, you’re allowed to fail. Don’t be so unfair on yourself, Anakin. You are an incredible person—”

Anakin laughed weakly, sniffing. “Nah, man, I’m a fucking mess”

The shrink laughed, too. “Let me tell you a secret, then. All best people are. And when they finally learn to love themselves, they’re unstoppable.”

 

* * *

 

 

Anakin keeps replaying that shit in his head, and he knows it’s not exactly healthy but he can’t help it. He tends to kind of get lost in thought when he drives. Or takes showers. Or is just generally left alone (which is all the fucking time, because Anakin’s a huge, veiny dick to others when he isn’t busy being a huge, veiny dick to himself).

He has a coughing fit as he stops at a red light. He’s still sick. But his temperature is a nice scorching hot rather than the sun’s surface hot he fell asleep with. Shmi took one good look at him at breakfast and pointed at the door. Told him he’s authorized to come home if the fever peaks, but otherwise his ass is grounded to school and back. Shit, Anakin was awestruck she even let him skip a single day, even if he was kind of dying.

The car behind him honks, startling him. Anakin glances at the mirror. A Mercedes. Of course. He’s not prejudiced, not really, not about what matters, but he fucking guessed that one. It’d be either that or a BMW. He squints, cracks a smile at the black suited jackass behind the wheel. Anakin’s got half a mind to just, sit here, watch the man self-combust in anger, but the traffic lights are probably about to turn back red, and Anakin has that fucking report on Quantum Leap to hand in. That motherfucking paper had been harder to finish than 3-CPO.

“Get a move on, faggot! Some of us have to work!” Anakin hears, followed by a cacophony of honking so loud the Pope probably just jump scared himself out of sleep.

Well.  _Well._

Here’s the thing: It’s a Wednesday. No one calls Anakin a faggot on Wednesdays and gets away with it.

Actually, no one calls anyone a faggot any fucking day of the week and gets away with it, not in front of him, _ever_. Anakin smiles, sniffing snot up his nose. He unfastens his seatbelt, cracks his knuckles, and opens the door.

 

* * *

 

 

_Coming to school today??_

_Aniiii cmonnn if you’re not going to answer my calls at least text back_

_Padmé is worried_

_You’re not at physics where are you??_

_Anakin just answer 1 of us_

_If you still havent said anything in 10 min we’ll call shmi_

 

* * *

“Should’ve used your mum to start with. Rookie mistake.”

Anakin’s fingers tighten around the phone. They hurt. There’s crusts of blood starting to form around the cut. He used to carry band aids in the glovebox, but when he opened it all he saw was his missing USB flash drive and like, six empty Coke cans. He works his jaw, up and down, trying to get it to pop back into place.

“ _Oi._ ” Kenobi starts again. He sounds raspy. Anakin had forgotten what he sounded like through a phone speaker. More nasal. More god damned British, if that’s fucking possible. “Don’t ignore me now.”

“I’m not ignoring you.”

“Then talk. What the hell happened?”     

“I—” Anakin’s jaw suddenly snaps with a very loud noise, and he groans. Say what you will about white old men and their repressed, tight-ass natures but that one had a mean right hook.

“Jesus, what was  _that?_ ”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing.”

Anakin clicks his tongue. “Get off my case, man, I said it’s nothing.” Like he could ever fucking tell Kenobi he just got into a tussle with a fifty year old man at a crossroad. He could do well without being thoroughly judged right now, thanks.

Anakin can see the problem just fine. He doesn’t need other people—especially ginger vessels of our Lord and Savior—telling him that he’s stupid. He knows he’s fucking stupid. He makes stupid decisions. It’s part of his charm. Besides, it wasn’t even a full blown fight. They both each landed like, one hit before a jogger interfered. That’s it. Then got into their respective vehicles and fucked off.

Anakin isn’t remotely concerned about complaints or whatever. If the man dares to rat him off, he’ll make it a hate crime. He fucking will. It’s not even an act. He can be  _extremely_  gay if he wants to.

Kenobi sighs, like he can hear what Anakin’s thinking. “Just… alright. Off your case. Are you still coming to school today?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there in five. I, uh, I caught an accident on the 6th.”

He’s sure Kenobi is going to call him on his bullshit, or ask for details, but the prick actually sort of drops it. “Oh, I’m sure.” Kenobi drawls. The irony is noted and dutifully ignored. “We’re still set for Snips birthday later?”

Anakin hums distractedly, already spotting the grey, big blocks of cement at the end of the avenue. Jesus, who in their right mind would ever design a school like that? Never mind it’s a public school, all it’s missing is a canine unit and barbed wire. _Fuck Palpatine._ “No, thank you, I think I’ve got better alternatives than the creepy old racist who runs our school.”

Anakin coughs. “What?” Shit, right, he probably cursed Palpatine out loud. Eh, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever slipped off his mouth by mistake. He snorts despite himself, smirking as he turns the wheel into his high school’s parking lot. “I’m flattered, man.”

A beat.

“You’re—flattered?” Kenobi asks, voice strange.

“Yeah, good to know I’m—”

“Yes?”

Oh. Wait.

Anakin closes the Motorola like it burn him. He throws the phone into the back without looking, not even fucking caring when he hears the thing bounce off the seats down to the carpets, probably lost forever in a sea of crumbs and empty water bottles.

He ends up making the curve too tight. Kenobi’s fucking Yamaha suddenly appears in the left corner of his vision, innocently parked next to a bunch of other snotty bikes. Anakin spends an extra five minutes trying to find a spot as far away from them as possible, the whole time wondering if he could get away with becoming a Satanist. Not even because he’s partial to Satan or whatever. Just to get back at his Dad, since his Dad already made Anakin’s life a living fucking _hell_.

 

* * *

 

 

“Sorry about the wait. The girls have to use our toilets now, and they’ve got priority. It’s complete chaos up there.”

Anakin shrugs, still staring ahead. If the voice hadn’t been telling enough, Anakin would’ve known who it was by the smell. Old Spice. Always Old Spice. Anakin can't tell what's worse, that Kenobi only seems to own one brand of perfume, or that Anakin isn't sick of it at all.

He kicks at an empty cigarette pack on the floor until he does it too hard and the thing goes flying off to the corner of the bar. He watches a girl pick it up. She shots him a dirty scowl before walking up to a bin, dropping the package inside in a very deliberate manner. Whatever. Like Anakin wouldn’t have gotten up to do the same. Most likely.

“How was Physics?” Kenobi asks.

The bench creaks a little as Kenobi sits by his side. Anakin shrugs again, still looking at the girl like he wants to choke her by sheer force of his thinking.

Actually, Physics was a fucking blast. Mr Ji—nah, Qui Gonna Jizz and his class of devil spawn decided that today they’d drop science and attempt a career at fucking comedy instead. Considering that Anakin barged in there twenty minutes late whilst looking like a fucking Fight Club roleplay enthusiast, he’d made perfect source material.

Although to be fair, Qui Gonna Jizz did pull him aside at the end to say that he’d count Anakin’s Quantum Leap report as 10 percent of his grade, which was pretty nice, considering Anakin did it as extra work.

“That bad?” Kenobi says lowly, only for Anakin’s ears. The bar isn’t very crowded. Even if it were, no one would give half a fuck about them. Anakin hears Kenobi shuffle around, draw his leg over the bench to face Anakin’s right side completely.

He can’t help but think of that stupid dream. Fucking ginger prick and his fucking need to straddle objects. Anakin wants to look at him, but his face’s already warming up like crazy.

“You talked to Padmé? She’s been on a SC meeting since eight, she was worried sick.”

“I texted her, yeah.” It’s not a lie. Anakin doesn’t want to imagine what he’d have to endure if he ignored her again. She’d fight him for real. And probably win. Padmé’s like, half his size, but she’s got ten times the kickboxing classes.

“So.” Kenobi starts, dropping his conspicuous baritone even lower. “Padmé—we got to talk—and she told me about—”

Anakin turns his head so fast he gives himself whiplash. “What?”

Kenobi blinks at him, leaning back slightly. He still hasn’t cut his fucking hair. It’s the longest Anakin’s ever seen him wear it. Admittedly, it’s still short. Kenobi had never let it grow past his ears, and now it’s almost reaching his shoulders. Fuck, why’s Anakin so unsettled by this?

He only realizes he’d been staring unblinkingly when Kenobi looks away. Anakin follows the line of his jaw. It’s not as aggressively red as it was yesterday. Fucker probably spent the whole night moisturizing. “Yeah, so, we talked, she told me the two of you broke up months ago.”

“Three.” Anakin blurts out, without thinking.

Kenobi nods, reaching for the pocket of his sweatshirt to take out the case where he keeps his Chesterfields. Anakin doesn’t think they’re allowed to smoke in the bar. He goes to say so, but Kenobi doesn’t take out a cigarette. He takes out a napkin, carefully folded in four. It’s a common napkin, a basic napkin, white and thin, obviously scribbled on. Anakin recognizes it immediately.

“That’s—”

“R2-D2, yeah? I told you I’d give it to you.”

Kenobi hands it to him, carefully, a corner of his mouth turned up. Shit. Shit, Anakin isn’t supposed to feel this fucking giddy over a god damned piece of processed tree. But the shrink told him to embrace his emotions, right? Color his life or what-the-fuck-ever. Well, Anakin can have one Picasso moment. So he lets himself smile.

R2-D2 is exactly as he remembers it: a shitty, yet expressive drawing of a midget robot. Awful enough to have been done by a ten year old, detailed enough to be Anakin’s product. R2-D2 would have been white and blue, cylinder, compact. Anakin traces the lines of the drawing with his thumb. At the time he remembers Kenobi giving him shit for it, because to him it’d looked like a copy of something else. What was it? Something British? A ‘maleck’?

“Hey, I remember you thought R2 looked like—” Anakin looks up. He stops talking before he can make himself continue.

Kenobi has his left elbow on the table, head held in the palm of his hand, tilted to the side. And he’s just—looking. Just looking at Anakin. Because people do that, right, people look at each other. _Not like this, though_ , Anakin’s brain adds, not under this light, not with those eyes. Not in a way that’s both so fucking familiar, and yet so frightfully new.

Anakin sniffles snot that doesn’t exist anymore, just to have something to do. His heart is racing. He drops his hands to his lap, the napkin stuck in the middle of his thighs. When his voice comes, it’s a murmur that barely sounds like him. “Uh, you called them _maleks_. Or something. Something that ends with ‘ _eck’_ ”

Kenobi inhales sharply. “Daleks. It’s from Dr. Who.”

Suddenly, Anakin’s vividly aware of how Kenobi’s facing him, how his knees are wide fucking open like a two-door entrance, inches away from him. One of his knees is under the table, hidden behind the bench. Anakin glances at it. It’s right there. Jean-clad, bony, it’s right fucking there. No one would see. There’s three people at the bar, a group of five on the table by the windows. That’s it.

He wonders if Kenobi’s still ticklish under his knees.

“Yeah—yeah, I remember that. Dude in the blue box—”

“Police box” Kenobi murmurs. Anakin looks back up at him, and it’s as if his eyes never left Anakin at all. They’re strange again. Clouded over, like the sea before a storm. Anakin’s desire to touch him is so fucking urgent he ends up clawing his fingers around the small amount of bench there is between them. His nails scratch against the wood.

Kenobi straightens himself, finally breaking eye contact. Thing is, he does it to stare at Anakin’s hand instead. Anakin’s wearing three layers of clothing today, and still feels naked under the inspection. “Did you punch someone? Don’t lie.”

“He deserved it.” Anakin says, clipped again. He glares at the lines of Kenobi’s lowered head. His fringe—a fucking literal fringe—is falling in front of his face, and partially blocks Anakin’s line of sight. It’d be a relief, except his sweatshirt is two sizes too big and rides low on his neck. Anakin can see his collarbones move as he breathes.

Kenobi leans back to give him an exasperated expression. “He deser—Christ, Anakin, what did you  _do_?”

 The bell rings. One of the girls at the bar yells out a very shrieked  _“Merde!”,_ and runs off, her half-eaten croissant left for dead on the bar’s counter.

Anakin swallows, the click of his throat embarrassingly loud in the silence that follows the French girl’s exit. He gets up from the bench, also embarrassingly fast, because he’s a fucking disgrace. “We should go now.”

“What?”

“I told Snips we’d be there before eleven”

A warm hand wraps around his own. Anakin jumps on his feet, and his first instinct is to immediately yank himself free. But the hold isn’t forceful, just merely—there. He looks down to see Kenobi inspect his knuckles more closely, his thumb brushing over them ever so slightly. It’s a feather-light touch and it makes Anakin’s skin erupt like a chicken’s.

“Alright, but we’ll drop by the infirmary first. You’re not meeting her looking like this.”

Anakin groans. He tears his hand away, reaching down for the napkin that’d slipped off his lap. “If you say anything about fucking Fight Club I’ll—”

“You’ll fight me?”

Yeah, that’s about the second word that starts with  _f_  that Anakin would use right now. He thinks this as he visibly presses his mouth shut, because God has been particularly shitty to him today on Freudian slips and he’s not taking any more chances. Anakin grabs his backpack, well aware of the heat that’s spread all over his face. “Just try it.”

Kenobi stands up as well, dusting invisible dirt off his jeans. Fucking clean freak. They fall into step together as they walk out of the bar. Anakin is trying very hard not to notice the width difference of their pace. Some fucker in the halls gives them a weird look, and Anakin stares him down until he stops. The two of them must make the weirdest fucking combo. A six foot human scowl who’s already been punched before eleven am and a small ginger guy wearing combat boots un-ironically. _Tragic_.

“Look, just tell me who ‘ _he’_ is. Who did you manage to assault before lunch hour?”

“It was just, this fucking _asshole_ in a Mercedes. Called me a faggot.” Anakin murmurs, spitting out the last word like it’s poison on his tongue.

Kenobi doesn’t say anything for a moment, but when he does Anakin hears the smile bleed into every single word. “Well, that's okay, then. Good job. I already know he looks worse than you.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his Levis, easy, just like that.

Anakin doesn’t quite stop walking, but he slows down his stomping enough to stare at the back of Kenobi’s head. That wasn’t what he’d expected, not in the fucking slightest. That wasn’t judgement. That particular bite in his voice, Anakin hadn’t heard it in a long ass fucking time, but he swears to God, it’s _pride_.

“You’re not...?” Anakin starts, but the word doesn’t come. He’s too dumbfounded to think of it.

Kenobi tilts his head backwards to grin at him. “What?”

Anakin shakes his head. He sucks his lower lip into his teeth to keep himself from mirroring Kenobi’s expression. Something tugs at his heartstrings, but it doesn’t hurt for once.

 

* * *

 

 

**(5 years ago)**

 

* * *

 

 

Ahsoka was three. She woke up, slowly, the warmth of sleep still firmly wrapped around her like blanket. Not that she needed any blankets. When she opened her eyes she saw the ceiling, painted blue, covered in stars. She couldn’t make out the stars then, not with the little amount of light that went through the curtains

Someone made a sound on her right. She turned her head to look at Anakin. Anakin was curled on his side, an arm slung over her, holding her close. He looked peaceful. The lines of his face were all soft. She liked his face. She liked his yellow hair, she liked to grab it. But Anakin always became very angry when she did it, and she didn’t want to make him angry. So, instead, she closed her tiny hand around his t-shirt. At the time, it didn’t cross Ahsoka’s mind, but the motion had meant: _mine_.

Anakin made a sound again. He puffed a breath right in Ahsoka’s face, and she wrinkled her nose in discomfort.

The bunk bed creaked. Ahsoka looked at her left. She recognized the sound of someone going up the metal ladder. She also recognized this someone’s particularly careful steps.

She smiled in glee when, sure enough, a red head popped over the bars. Obi-Wan grinned when he saw Ahsoka was already awake. She shrieked in glee, immediately thrusting her free hand at him. “Obi! Obi!”

Anakin made a  _grrr_  noise, and Obi-Wan held a finger to his lips. She knew what that meant:  _shhh_.

Always careful, Obi-Wan crawled over the safety bars to very, very slowly drop on Ahsoka’s left side. He laid on his side and, just like Anakin, drew one of his arms over her chest. Except his hand didn’t settle around her shoulders, it went further, around Anakin’s back.

Ahsoka couldn’t help the bubbling giggle when he kissed her on the nose, and then on the forehead. She kissed him back, aiming for one of the tiny spots he had on his face. Anakin said they were freckles. Ahsoka thought they were just like the starts on the ceiling.

“Happy birthday, love.” Obi-Wan whispered.

She giggled again, holding up three fingers. “I’m three!”

“Yes, you are.”

“And I’m tired.” Anakin muffled against the mattress, startling both of them. Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes at him. He pushed himself up on his elbow to pinch Anakin’s cheek lightly. “Yeah, yeah, happy birthday _, woo-ooh_.”

Obi-Wan pinched him again, harder. Now that Anakin was obviously awake, Ahsoka figured she didn’t have to keep herself from bothering him any longer. She pushed their arms away, jumping on top of him.

Anakin yelped. “Damn it, that’s my ribs, you—”

“Wake up, Ani, Wake up! I’m three!” Ahsoka laughed in his face, tugging at his cheeks not unlike she’d seen Obi-Wan do. Anakin tried to still her, all of the softness in his lines gone and replaced by a scowl Ahsoka was already familiar with. Anakin could be scary, sometimes, but she’d never been afraid of him before, not even once.

The bed creaked dangerously under their collective weight, more so at Anakin’s admittedly weak attempts at blocking Ahsoka’s attacks. He snapped after a firm yank at his hair, and his fingers became tighter around her arms.

“Alright, birthday girl, calm down.” Obi-Wan said. He picked her up under her armpits, placing her in his lap instead. She fell back against him, seeking warmth. Anakin only wore t-shirts to bed, but Obi-Wan had always preferred long sleeved sweatshirts. They were very soft. Just like him. “Give his royal highness a minute, yeah?”

Ahsoka watched Anakin mutter something unintelligible under his breath, sitting up groggily. His hair was everywhere. “Ruyal heigh ness?” She repeated after a moment, looking up to poke at Obi-Wan’s chin.

“Yes, err—you know, like the kings and queens.”

She blinked, still clueless. Anakin dragged a hand across his face and sighed. “Like Jasmine, Snips.”

Ahsoka would’ve slipped off the bunk bed in excitement if it hadn’t been for Obi-Wan’s hold around her stomach. “Jasmine! Jasmine is a ruyal heigh ness? Ani is like Jasmine?” She pointed one finger at Anakin accusingly, feeling like that was brand new information of the most extreme pertinence, and they weren’t serious about it. “But Jasmine is a princess! Ani is not a princess!”

Obi-Wan smirked down at her. “You know, love, some days I wonder.”

Anakin huffed, reaching with a foot to push at Obi-Wan’s side. “Shut up, prick.”

“But he’s bitch-faced.” Ahsoka thought aloud, mostly to herself. Obi-Wan and Anakin froze at that. Then Obi-Wan let out a laugh so violent it shook the entire bunk. He leaned back against the safety bars, his breath coming up short from his nose, still laughing.

“Oh my  _god,_ bitch-faced!” he repeated in-between giggles. Ahsoka felt herself smile as well. She didn’t know what bitch-faced meant, but she always felt tempted to laugh when other people did. Especially out of something she’d said.

Anakin waved a hand frantically in front of her to get her attention back. “Hey, hey, where did you hear that?” He wasn’t laughing. He didn’t seem happy. Obi-Wan stopped giggling as well. The room was quiet, except for the occasional sound of birds singing outside.

“Oh, c’mon mate, I don’t think it was serious—”

“Snips, where did you hear that?” Anakin asked one more time, a lot lower. Ahsoka pressed further into Obi-Wan’s lap, suddenly feeling very guilty. She liked it when he got mad because he made funny faces, but this face wasn’t funny at all.

“The—the big kids…” she whispered. She was going to explain how she’d heard it outside in the backyard, but the words were a little difficult, and Anakin looked away from her before she could try. His mouth got thin. He drew his knees to his chest, hugging them close.

“I’m not bitch-faced.”

No, Ahsoka decided, whatever that meant, he wasn’t any of it, no, not even a little. If it made him this sad, Anakin was the opposite of bitch-faced. Ahsoka was sure of this.

She felt Obi-Wan’s chest expand and deflate behind her. He bent his neck down to whisper in her ear. Except he was doing secrets all wrong, because it was obvious that Anakin could hear him loud and clear. “Oi, Snips, why do you think that Jasmine is a princess?”

She pondered on this. Anakin glared at them from the corner of his eye, obviously suspicious of wherever the conversation was heading. “Jasmine is pretty. Princesses are pretty.”

“Yeah? What else.”

“She’s brave. Princesses are brave. And she fights! And she—” Ahsoka paused, considering Anakin for a moment. “Anakin fights.”

Anakin blinked at her, eyes widening.

Ahsoka pulled at Obi-Wan’s arm to let her go, which he easily did. She crawled to where Anakin had closed himself up like a clam, and smiled up at him. It took him some seconds, but he eventually smiled back. A real smile. The only expression she liked more than she liked his annoyed one. He untangled his scrawny limbs and let Ahsoka crash against him, so hard the air was knocked out of his lungs.

“And Anakin is brave!” she affirmed, kissing his nose like Obi-Wan had kissed hers. She leaned back and clapped his cheeks with a smacking sound. The smile dissolved immediately.

“ _Ow_ ”

“And pretty!” she finished, sitting back on his legs to appreciate the half-hearted scowl he was giving her. “Anakin is a ruyal heigh ness like Jasmine. Not bitch-faced. Right, Obi?”

“That’s right, Snips.” Obi-Wan confirmed. She felt ecstatic. A real life princess! She could hit his face and pull his hair. Ahsoka was so lucky. She couldn’t wait to tell her friends her brother was a ruyal heigh ness. She’d have to explain to them what that was, and Ahsoka _loved_ explaining stuff.

Anakin let her play with the laces of his pajama pants. He would’ve looked bored and infinitely unamused if it weren’t for how red his face was.

“Can we dress up? Please, please! You can have my crown.” Ahsoka pleaded, already imagining five hundred different scenarios for them to act. Maybe they could play that game with the umbrellas and the spaceships, except instead of the weird robes they could wear dresses. Maybe this time they’d finally let her go up the attic with them. “Do you know other princesses?” She asked distractedly “Do you know Jasmine?”

There was a snort, and Anakin looked past her to glare at Obi-Wan. “No. And I’m not a damn—”

“ _Oi._ ” Obi-Wan warned. He lifted an eyebrow, and motioned to Ahsoka with his chin, a gesture she did not catch. “Today you are, alright?” Anakin opened his mouth to protest, but before he could Obi-Wan spoke again. “Besides, she made a very good argument, mate.”

 

* * *

 

**(present)**

 

* * *

 

Ahsoka is nine.

Miss Satine watches them from her desk, all huddled around a table. She’d given the class permission to go outside and play, since it is the eleven am mid break, and they’re allowed to roam free as they please (preferably bothering someone else so she can sneak in a little cigar).

However, and she’d expected this, most of the children had decided to stay behind, with Ahsoka, waiting for her so-called brothers. Miss Satine understands their interest. Ahsoka is a very gifted child, with leadership qualities and a charisma so natural to her sweet smile, you barely miss it. But it’s there, all that potential, in-between her recently dyed hair.

Ahsoka had walked in this morning and Miss Satine nearly toppled over. Apparently, as she’d explained it, it’d been her mothers’ birthday present. White and blue locks, braided around her face.

And the girl isn’t even pretentious about it. Children are cruel and they’d have shredded anyone else with such an eccentricity, but Ahsoka simply shrugs and tells them she thought it’d look cool.

 _Cool_. Miss Satine is becoming too old.

The thought is almost instantly reaffirmed when she hears heavy running echoing outside the hallway, growing louder. She sighs and rubs her eyelids. You’d trust Yoda to build an orphanage that only seems to raise children with strong personalities. Tiny bastard.

The memory is too strong to be a simple déjà vu when Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi burst through the door, holding a suspiciously looking package and a small bag, respectively.

“Told you I still knew where it was! I fucking knew it!” Skywalker yells, pointing the pole—or whatever the hell he’s got paper wrapped in his hand—at Kenobi, who simply shrugs. It’s Kenobi who notices the lot of children gaping at them, and Miss Satine’s single raised eyebrow.

He elbows Skywalker in the stomach.

“ _What_? Oh.”

The last time she saw these two was almost two years ago, at a retirement party of one of the orphanage’s cooks. She’s got hidden behind her judgmental mask the same shock she’d had back then. They’d grown so much. And they’ve grown now, too.

“Guys!” Ahsoka shrieks, jumping out of the table to run at them. It’s Kenobi she hugs first. He lowers himself to her height, his arm coming around her, as he kisses her nose, and then her forehead. Miss Satine had seen the two of them do this little ritual a couple of times. It never fails to weight on her chest. “You told me you couldn’t come! You lied!” Ahsoka mutters, but she’s grinning

“I got myself a ride.” Kenobi says, gently. He pushes her away a little and turns up a smile at her hair. “Someone had a makeover for her birthday. Looks sick, Snips.”

Ahsoka laughs, not embarrassed in the slightest, giving herself a little twirl.

“You look insane.” Skywalker quips, but he’s smiling his own lopsided version of an honest grin. Ahsoka scowls. Miss Satine narrows her eyes, finally placing the expression. Oh, she’d known she’d seen it on someone else, but she’d never imagined—of course, it should’ve been her first guess.

Miss Satine gets up from behind the desk as Ahsoka jumps into Skywalker’s open arms, punching him in the shoulder blades. He yelps, and gives her a fast spin. Her feet nearly hit the skeleton model.

“Alright, alright, settle down.” Miss Satine says. The rest of the children have been approaching them slowly, overwhelmed by the immediate tight bubble those tree create around themselves.

“Are you her brothers?” Jimmy asks, picking at his nose.

Skywalker looks surprised, Kenobi isn’t. “Yes, yes we are. I’m Obi-Wan, and this is Anakin” He motions, smiling.

“And Anakin can speak for himself.” Skywalker says, mocking Kenobi’s happy voice.

Kenobi ignores him. He steps ahead to meet the teacher’s desk, holding out a hand. “Miss Satine, it’s always a pleasure.”

Miss Satine laughs warmly at how much things change and how much they don’t. She can’t help the blush that creeps up her cheeks when he lowers his head to kiss the hand she raises. This impossible British boy. Still infinitely more mature than his peers. Kenobi’s formal politeness at the age of ten had made her suspicious at first, until she realized he’d never been allowed to be anything else than spotless. “Well—of course, likewise, Mr. Kenobi.”

“Miss Satine’s blushing!” Tsau Xiang yells. There’s a general laughter that dies when she fixes them with a look. She catches Skywalker’s glare and sends him a smirk of her own. Oh, yes, how much things change, and how much they don’t. It perplexes the poor young man enough that he’s still bugging his eyes out his sockets when she lays a hand on his arm.

“And how are you, Mr. Skywalker?”

“Uh, I’m good.” he mutters. Up close, she notices the purple nasty bruise on his cheek, a faded red on the other. A quick glance tells her that, yes, there are bandages around his knuckles. It’s almost unfair, how someone who’s always getting beaten in one way or another can still be so devastatingly handsome.

She remembers him then as clearly as she sees him now. The same bothered, annoyed expression, reluctantly showing her the white bunny in his backpack, the class’s pet, Snowball, wrapped comfortably in his jacket. He’d told her he was going to free it from its prison. That no one deserved to live in a cage. He’d been 9 years old.

“So, we’ve brought presents—” Kenobi starts.

Ahsoka makes intention to grab for the bag in his hands, but stops herself. “No, no, wait, the cake! We gotta sing happy birthday first!” She says hurriedly. The children follow her back to the table, excitedly whispering about the box Miss Satine had fetched from the cafeteria’s fridge some minutes ago. Ahsoka gets up on one of the chairs, grinning at Skywalker. Miss Satine waves a finger at her and she groans. “Please, just to blow the candles, Miss Satine,  _please._ ”

“Miss Tano, must I give you your very first sad sticker on the day of your birthday?”

Ahsoka immediately jumps off the chair, composing her denim skirt. “No, Miss Satine.” she sing-songs, letting enough cheek slip into her voice that Miss Satine can barely contain her own smile. She goes to find the lighter in her purse, listening to the idle chatter of the room. Some of the girls are whispering furiously about the two strangers, sending shy, giggly looks in their way, which she finds amusing and just the slightest bit funny.

“The sticker thing really works with you, uh?” Skywalker comments. He makes sure his tone is judgmental, same as ever, knowing exactly where to press the girl’s buttons.

Ahsoka crosses her arms and pouts. “No! I just don’t want to get a sad sticker on my birthday. Or ever. Because  _I_  am a good student.” Unlike  _someone_ , is the clear missing piece.

 _Atta girl_ , Miss Satine thinks. Kenobi appears to be thinking the same, from the way he’s smiling.

“Whatever, nerd.” Skywalker huffs. The lad actually looks affected from the nine year old’s jab. Miss Satine lets herself admit, for just a little, just while she takes the lid out of the cake’s box, that she missed these two boys.

“Ahsoka says you are the person with most sad stickers in your class.” Lauren says, red as a brick.

The kids regard Skywalker with newfound interest. He squirms underneath their blatant scrutiny. Kenobi claps a hand at his back, and he jumps in his toes. “In his class? Ani here is the person with most sad stickers in the history of your elementary school.” He says, suddenly serious and grave, the sole tell of his mask being the crinkle of his eyes. “ _And_ he got a red frown once”

One of the kids makes a small, muffled scream.

“Hey, shut the fu—”

Miss Satine rushes to stop him, but Skywalker swallows the word himself. It’s quite sensible of him. Of course, when she walks around the table to place the cake and plates near Ahsoka, she sees Kenobi’s boot move from on top of Anakin’s squashed shoe. That, too, is familiar to her.

“Is it true?” Neo asks lowly.

Ahsoka nods. Miss Satine’s a little concerned about how proud the girl looks.

“And I’m sure Mr. Skywalker can tell you all about the horrible, _horrible_ punishments he got from that.” Miss Satine says, fixing the children with her primed evil look, the one she couldn’t pull off in her twenties but certainly can today. “Now, let us light the candles, yes? You’ve got twenty minutes left of break and they  _will_  include teeth brushing.”

The class groans collectively. They spread themselves around the big table, tilting forward to peek at the cake. It’s a beautiful cake, made by one of Ahsoka’s mothers, Shadya, who owns a bakery. Ahsoka leans on her elbows to smell the chocolate frosting, laughing randomly as all excited kids do.

She pulls Skywalker and Kenobi to each of her sides, hands fisting both of their shirts as Miss Satine lights up the last candle of nine. Skywalker’s expression morphs entirely. His mouth curves in a very slight smile, so slight it’s as if he’s completely unaware he’s doing it.

Miss Satine notices how the hand Kenobi had smacked on Skywalker’s back is now wide behind his neck, his thumb moving almost imperceptibly into the skin on his shoulder. He, too, is smiling, eyes half lidded with a warmth that’s nearly too private to be witnessed.

The three of them, perched at the table, surrounded by a bunch of loud pre-pubescent kids, make a very strange picture. A beautiful picture, nonetheless.

 

* * *

 

 

This is fine, Anakin recites to himself, gripping the wheel. This is just fucking  _fine_. Kenobi drops unceremoniously in the seat next to him with a small grunt. He closes the door, and the click of the lock sounds even louder when it’s followed by complete, utter silence.

God, Anakin’s such an idiot. Like, he can’t even blame anyone else, here. Not even his luck. He brought this situation on himself. If anything, he can curse his ever present subliminal concern with the environment. Yeah, that’s it, he’d wanted to save the atmosphere a couple extra puffs of carbon dioxide by giving Kenobi a ride. That’s all there was to it.

 _Shit_ , driving here had been awkward enough, but it hadn’t been this fucking awkward. They’d argued about pointless crap the whole time. Anakin doesn’t feel like discussing Palpatine’s possible morning satanic rituals now. He doesn’t know why, exactly, it just feels wrong to make small talk.

He abruptly jams the key into the ignition and starts it. The Opel’s engine coughs a few times before it settles in its normal loud thrum. He hears Kenobi drum his fingers on the Tupperware Miss Satine had given them with leftover cake.

“Miss Satine looks the same, doesn’t she?” Kenobi asks.

Anakin hums, turning the wheel with the same automatic detachment he always gets when he drives. It’s a good thing his body knows what the fuck to do on its own, because his head is too busy having a lifelong screamo concert. He throws a hand over the passenger seat after he shifts into reverse. Anakin realizes halfway through how close to Kenobi that brings him, but it’s too late to take his arm off without it being weird. Well, weirder.

Obviously, Anakin’s mind decides to become hyperaware of his limbs, and driving backwards is suddenly something he’s never done before in his life.

“Didn’t think Maya would’ve let Snips dye her hair like that. Very non-republican of her.” Kenobi says. He gives a strange breathy laugh. “Then again, she’s a very non-republican type of republican, isn’t she?”

Anakin hums again. Fuck, but Kenobi smells so good. Anakin’s a man of science. He knows what the fuck pheromones are and how they work. He knows what his body is doing, why he’s doing it. Somehow, this knowledge heightens the feeling on the bottom of his stomach.

The left side of his face starts to grow warmer. Kenobi’s staring at him. Not that Anakin would fucking know. The Opel’s rear window has never been so thoroughly examined.

He hears Kenobi laugh again. Warm air brushes right against his neck. “You’ve got a—”

Anakin jumps back as he catches Kenobi’s fingers getting closer to his face. He lets go of the clutch in the process and the Opel bumps forward violently. Kenobi loses balance and his head smashes back into the seat’s headrest. For a second, they both stay like that, staring at each other with huge eyes. Anakin wonders if he can just run back to school and leave Kenobi here with his car. He’d die, maybe, but that has never stopped being an option, either.

Kenobi rubs a hand over the back of his head. His eyes narrow. Well, _shit_. “What the hell was that about?”

“You—!” Anakin puts his hands back on the wheel, leans forward to loosen his seatbelt. “You fucking jump scared me!”

“How did I jump scare you? I only meant to—”

Anakin waits for the rest, but it doesn’t come. He risks a glance. Kenobi’s turned to angrily stare down at the Tupperware. He’s blushing. Really blushing. He tucked some of his hair behind his ears, and Anakin can see how red they are.

“Just” Kenobi starts, after opening and closing the Tupperware three times. “Check your bloody mirror.”

Anakin deflates. The annoyance of being told what to do clouds his frustration enough for him to click his tongue. He does want to know why Kenobi had been reaching out to touch him, damn it. Making a big fucking show of broadcasting his annoyance, Anakin peaks at his mirror.

First of all, he looks like a fucking train wreck, which, great. Secondly, there’s a chocolate smudge in the corner of his mouth. Anakin grimaces, wiping it off with the back of his hand. Did he seriously walk around with a shit stain on his face? No wonder Snips had that smirk on her face when they said their goodbyes. And Miss Satine, too. God, for all he loves women, they certainly don’t love him back.

“I look like I just ate—” Fuck, he can't say  _ass_. Anakin staggers, face hotter than a furnace. “cake. Chocolate cake. Yup.”

“ _Yup_.” Kenobi parrots. Anakin goes to glare at him but Kenobi’s expression is light and ever so amused. He’s still red in the face, but his forehead isn’t all tense anymore. “Do you eat a lot of _chocolate cake_?”

Anakin snorts, shifting into reverse again. He makes sure both of his hands are on the wheel when he drives off the parking spot. It’s harder this way, but his spatial sense comes through when it’s got to. “Not a lot. I’ve got standards, you know?” He drawls, voice a lot lower than he intended.

Kenobi turns to stare out of the window, but Anakin still catches him biting his lip. “I’m sure you do.”

Anakin licks at his own mouth, slowly. _Yeah, you’d know all about them_ , he wants to say. It’d be easy. Anakin might not know what he’s doing half the time, but this part he can handle. He can do it just right. It’s been a slow dawn on his side, but he’s come to realize he could probably sweet talk Kenobi into crawling to his lap right now.

He could pull over, somewhere. Anywhere. He could probably hold him down in the backseats.

Shit, alright. _Alright_. Anakin swallows, nearly missing a curve. Don’t indulge in every compulsion that strikes you, right? The shrink had said that shit. Anakin’s been such a good boy so far. God knows he has. God knows he hasn't indulged in anything. Not outside of his dreams. Anakin got a taste of it, once, and he paid for that, big time.

He takes in Kenobi’s smaller frame next to him, shoulders tight, forehead pressed against the glass. He sees how combed his hair is, soft-looking, barely curling at the edge of his neck. It’s begging Anakin to yank it, pull it, fucking ruin it. Ruin _him_.

Anakin looks back at the road. He lets his knuckles turn white and then relaxes the blood circulation back into his hands. “Mace Windu probably eats a lot of cake.” he says. If this tension doesn’t snap, he’s gotta stop the car.

Kenobi's laugh is expected, but still makes Anakin's shoulders drop in relief. “Jesus  _Christ_ , that’s a sentence.”

“What?” Anakin presses, feeling stupidly proud of how normal he sounds despite how fast his pulse is. “You don’t think he does?”

“I think the cake has to deem itself worthy first. Solve a two-variable equation.” Kenobi snickers, stretching against the seat. He throws his arms up, crossing them behind the armrest. He looks like he's fucking displaying himself. Anakin can't look at him anymore. 

“Can you imagine that asshole flirting?” He says, mostly to distract himself, tuning his voice to the clipped authoritarian edge of the teacher, “Hey girl, can I get your number, and two pages on the factorization of polynomials by tomorrow.”

Kenobi laughs again, harder this time. Anakin hears him clap his hands together like a fucking seal. All shit considered, him and Kenobi pseudo-discussing how and if their Calculus teacher eats ass as they drive back from their pseudo-sister's school is not the worst thing in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen......i know.............................its been........84 years..............  
> and this might be absolute shit but im just so fucking happy i managed to plan out a chapter and write it through i dont even care (thats a lie i care a lot)  
> anyway  
> im very sorry if this is not what u expected or what you wanted  
> i think ive got two more chapters to go, if one of them isn't an epilogue of sorts  
> thank you for all the sweet, wonderful comments i received on the last update (three fucking years ago)  
> my back is killing me. i just accidentally knocked my fav mug of tea off my desk. im not even joking im staring at the pieces as im writing this.  
> jesus christ  
> ok  
> i love you all <3  
> come tell me to kys on my tumblr (pls dont ill delete): http://itswowza.tumblr.com/  
> also playlist for this: http://8tracks.com/4k144p/r-e-t-r-o-g-r-a-d-e  
> song title from waiting game by banks which is a MEGA retrograde song lol


End file.
